Final Fantasy XIV - Glamour System

I spend way too much time using the vanity system on MMORPGs that have them and I try to avoid the ones that don't. #GamingConfessions
— Mr. Arocena (@MrArocena) January 26, 2015

I tweeted this when I saw the #GamingConfessions hashtag earlier this week and boy is it ever true.

It all started on SWTOR and when I got enough Social points to get the first set of social armour.  I liked the top and since I could swap out the Armour piece, modification piece and enhancement piece I stuck with the same top for most of my leveling experience.

Once I hit end-game I had accumulated a huge number of social points and my social rank was fairly high so I had access to a lot of the social armour sets.  I bought a bunch of them and started mixing and matching to find a look that I liked (thankfully the social armour is cheap).  There were other pieces of customizable armour as well so I spent a great deal of money on the Galactic Market looking for interesting pieces.  This was made even more expensive by the fact that I could customize the appearance of my companions so I had 5 other people to customize.  Took a while and a lot of credits to give my main character and his main companion a look that I liked.

This extended to a lot of other games that have vanity systems like League where I've spent a large amount of money picking up skins that make my character look cool (or skins that are limited edition).  The skins have absolutely no practical purpose but they look cool.

So this brings me to Final Fantasy XIV.  A game with a really robust vanity system known as their Glamour system.  In some ways not as restrictive as SWTOR but in some ways more restrictive.

Final Fantasy XIV - Reborn Enjoyment of the MMORPG

So as I mentioned in my 2014 Year in Review, a friend had bought me Final Fantasy XIV - A Realm Reborn (FF14 for short) while it was on sale at Steam a few weeks (or maybe months now?) back.  Surprised me as I was going to buy it the same day he bought it for me.  Anyways, I didn't really play much of it for the first couple of days of my subscription because of school work and I think I was focusing on improving my League of Legends play as the season ended.

That changed once Christmas hit though.  I had no incentive to improve my League play until the next season started so I picked up Final Fantasy again.  At first I wasn't too impressed as the combat was identical to every other MMORPG I had played and there was no voice over in the cut-scenes.  SWTOR I think really set the bar for general questing as the voices added character to the quest givers makes the game that much more immersive.  Mind you there are some cut-scenes in FF14 that have voice-overs but they are kind of random and seem forced at times (not as good as the voice work in SWTOR in my opinion).  I stuck with it though as another friend picked up the game as well and we sort of leveled together, him a healer and me a tank (just as we did in SWTOR).

A couple of things stood out as I leveled.

2014 Year in Review

2014 was an interesting year.

• Taught in a distance educating school
• went on strike for 4 weeks and a bit,
• went to London and Paris with the family
• and played a lot of games (both digital and non-digital).

Overall a good year even with the loss of a months salary and stress caused by my work strike.  Now on to some more specific accounts on various gaming fronts.