League of Legends - Awesome Plays vol. 1

Despite what my previous posts might suggest, I do still play other games aside from Final Fantasy 14.  And to prove it I'm going to start by showcasing some nice plays from a recent League of Legends night I had with some friends.

I still play a lot of League but mostly with friends in recent weeks.  Haven't played much ranked despite season 5 starting a few weeks ago.  I'm only 2 placement matches in.  So far 0-2 because I am out of practice and I really should play a bunch of normal games to get the hang of the new patch.  I probably won't though and at some point in the future i'm going to just dive right into my remaining 8 placement matches.

Anyways on to some highlights of a recent game!  Two warnings though: one of my friends uses some colorful language.  Also I think I need to adjust my mic settings to tone down some of the higher pitches/volume from my voice.

Final Fantasy XIV - End-Game grinding

I don't believe it but I'm actually playing the end-game game in Final Fantasy XIV.  All other MMORPGs I've played where I reached end-game I kind of stopped playing.  For example in WoW when I hit 70 in the Burning Crusade expansion I kind of just stopped.  I think I grinded out enough reputation and gold to be the first in my guild to get a dragon mount but I never did anything else of note (i.e. I did not go dungeon raiding).  Mostly because the raids and dungeons took so much time (at least 2 hours for a single dungeon and days for raids).  End-game WoW was geared towards hardcore raiders back then compared to now.

Similarly when I hit end-game in SWTOR I kind of just stopped too.  My friend and I attempted some of the end-game flashpoints with our NPC companions but some were too difficult to do and I didn't bother with any other end-game content even after the group finder was implemented.  I did pick up the expansion and finished the expansion stories but again I did not attempt any of the end-game flashpoints, operations or daily grind missions.  I think I might have tried grinding out some tokens for entry level raid gear but not enough to be too proud of anything.

However, in FF14 I've discovered that the end-game activities do not seem as much of a grind as the others.

Final Fantasy XIV - Mialee's Look Complete!

Recently I've replaced my morning LoL game with an equivalent amount of time playing Final Fantasy XIV.  No real agenda in the morning so sometimes I craft or level another class or run a daily duty roulette for additional tomestones or whatever.  This morning I decided to see how many Ifrit Hard Mode trials I could accomplish before getting ready for work.

I'm glad I did as I got some stuff that I wanted.

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.

Video Games - Adventures in Disney Infinity 2.0

My wife has the fortune of working for a company that was kind enough to reimburse her for some of the cost of completing her registered pharmacy technician program.  Most of the money ended up going into savings but she decided to set aside a chunk of it as some fun money to sort of reward herself and her family for putting up with her horrid schedule while she was studying, working and being a mom.

She bought herself some dishes as we needed new ones and the rest of the money went into an Xbox One, some accessories and games.  One of those happened to be the new Disney Infinity 2.0. I had written about my experiences with Disney Infinity 1.0 on the Wii earlier this year and I was looking forward to see what the new version could do, especially on the more powerful Xbox One.