Backlog 2022

[Kikki]

Goodness, I didn't even notice greensara sneaking that pregnancy mention into the middle of the casual last paragraph, there. Good thing Mikodesu noticed it. So: 4 children, wow! One of the very rare people of this generation who are actually not just meeting but surpassing the number needed to replace the previous generation. I know so many couples, SO MANY, who have no children at all and clearly never will. I'd be one of them even if I was part of a couple, so I'm not criticizing them or anything, but it's so common now for people to stay single a very long time, and to not even have kids when they do marry, or only have one or maaaaaaaaaaybe two, that it's clear in most of the first-world countries, populations are declining. I think Canada only keeps growing because we bring in immigrants pretty quickly and constantly. Well, it's a nation of immigrants, after all.

Why did I start....ah yeah, lol. ANYWAY! Congrats, greensara, I hope you have a smooth and comfortable (as is possible) fourth baby arrival in a month.

You're doing great and I'm so glad you're enjoying things despite the story's slow start! Just like ryume said, it can't be understated that the game's story is incredible. ARR is a set up that will have you saying once you hit Endwalker "They literally planned this, I remember this, those bastards knew this was going to happen for ten years (of development) and somehow managed to keep us all in the dark. I cannot believe they did this!" (in a good way lol). For now though, enjoy the journey! You level will cap at 60 for now because of the free trial. Let me know when you hit your first Trial and we can work out a time I can come nuke it for you. :3

P.S. Just changed my icon yesterday!

Oh good, so I didn't bumble around not noticing it for months, lol.

Thanks It won't sync your level down? A lot of story-based combat I've done drags my level down to where I'm supposed to be in the story, right now. I'll definitely mention it all sad-faced in the Backlog thread when I come up to a part I can't solo, lol. I have to have a party of 8 for a Trial, right?

I was looking at where I was in the story (just by checking a list of MSQ titles with levels, no spoilers) and it looks like I'm on the 87th quest of 164 available in the main part (7th Umbral Era) of ARR. So: half way through the original part of the game. AKA: Not very far. Especially since there are ANOTHER 80 quests in the 7th Astral Era...the stuff added in patches before the next major story addition of Heavensward.

So I'm a third of the way through ARR where I am right now. Not very far, since Heavensward is playable in the free portion, too! I'm definitely going to hit level cap before even getting to the ARR Astral Era stuff, but that's fine, since with that much more to go beyond ARR and Heavensward, it's clearly not going to be hard to hit the level 90 final cap. I thought it'd stress me out to be wasting EXP at level 60 when I could save doing anything for when/if I decide to buy the rest of the game, but it looks like that'd be pointless with how much more there is. There's no need to save EXP to keep leveling up, from what I can tell.

I love questing...always have. At least, when there's any story at all connected to it, I do. If a quest is just 'I need 5 purple brooms/4 dead monsters/etc, please go get me them?' and a 'thanks', then questing feels tedious, but it's never tedious when it feels like world-building, to me. (Or at least character building.)

Guess I've got to get through ARR to get to the part where the story's gonna grab me, but since I enjoy questing and collecting, I'll probably be fine to get by on gameplay until it does. Also! I was surprised a little by how it feels like I'm not even playing with others around. Sometimes I see names of other players over the heads of characters, but there doesn't seem to be any interaction going on, and unlike WoW, you don't have to wait for others to get out of your way before you can do a quest. I remember waiting in a field with dozens of others for the chance to be able to pick up a key item, and another of waiting in a cave with a crowd, trying to be the first one to get a hit in on a boss monster so that I could finish my current quest. With FFXIV, I don't really notice the other players much at all and I don't seem to need to wait on them to do what they want before I can do what *I* want.

EDIT: About a dozen of my seeds have sprouted! Several each of the Merlot lettuce and the arugula. None yet of Tom Thumb but I bet he's just slower since they seem very happy in there! Gonna leave the warmth/humidity dome on for today and start taking it off during the day beginning tomorrow. Will seed a second tray on Friday to keep a fresh crop of greens on the way all winter, I hope!

[greensara]

Welcome back and congrats Ryume! Hopefully things will be a little less crazy for you with grad school off your plate.

Thanks Mikodesu and Kikki! Yeah, it seems less common now. Growing up, most kids I knew were one of three or four, (I was one of six by the time I finished highschool, lol) but most people my age now rarely have more than two. Hopefully everything will go well next month. I know I never envisioned myself as a mom playing videogames as a kid, my mother sure didn't, but here I am. The kids all love Animal Crossing, Zelda, and farming games, so I think we're raising them right, lol.

I found out today that there is demo for Sonic Frontiers in the Japanese eShop and it looks like it supports English, so I downloaded it. Haven't played it yet, but I was mildly interested to see what it was like.

Just a blurb for Harvestella pricing here: it is presently on sale in the US eShop for $47.99 (slight discount), and physically from Best Buy and Walmart for $39.99 this morning. I was strongly considering it, but I don't know, I really want to wait for at least $29.99. Not a bad discount considering how new it is though.

[Kikki]

Oh hey, it's good that you mentioned that, greensara; I've been waiting on a Harvestella sale. Hmm, 20% off (at least on the Canadian eshop). Not bad, given how new it is, for sure. I have 11 more days to decide though. If it's on sale now, there's a good chance it won't go on sale again before I start to really want to have it, so...some thinkins to do. Will comb my upcoming and most-wanted list to see what the next half-year's purchases currently look like they'll be.

Oh and...Untitle Goose Game is 50% off right now, if anybody cares. I know some here already love that game, so it might be one that appeals to the Fogu group in general. That sale ends TODAY though! (Or so says my eshop...I believe Canada and the US...and probably Mexico?...share the same eshop except your settings show you the prices in your own currency. So if it's ending for me today, it's probably ending for everyone in North America. I think.)

I won't be buying a game today but will keep in mind that I have to decide on Harvestella before around the 28th of this month, or be content to wait at least a couple of months into the new year before getting it. Probably it'll go on sale again around March, or, failing that, then during Golden Week late April/early May. I just have to decide if I'll mind waiting that long or not.

[Bluie]

Snip

Actually, we can cheat in a way that's actually endorsed by the game itself. >:3c

We can Unsync trials so my level 90 character can accompany just you as they are and kill things in 1-2 hits. I solo content in A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormbood content every week as there's a weekly challenge that encourages it and gives out prizes. I replayed Heavensward last year completely solo too, every dungeon and trial was just lil ol' me. Tons of people unsync certain trials as groups because they cough up mounts if you're lucky enough. So yeah, it'll be a nuke lol. IIRC, there's eight trials in ARR that are required for story completion and a handful of others that are just for fun or tied to side quests. The first four are the base game and the second four are after the initial credits in the lead up to Heavensward. You may actually be able to solo the first two trials as they're under under level 40, and if you happen to be at 60 before you hit them, you'd have a fair chance. The unsync option is found under the little gear icon in the Duty Finder menu. It'll allow you to try anything solo, except for current content (Level 90 stuff).

Congrats, greensara!

[Kikki]

I only just now realized that I've already done one trial...the thing that had me beat Ifrit was one, I believe...the one I failed four times because I 1) Didn't know what I had to do the first time or two, and then 2) Didn't know how to lock onto the nail properly so that I'd stop dropping my target after every attack. (lol?) I was assigned a party of NPCs for that one. Is that because it was one of the easier ones that's doable with just a light party, rather than a big one that more typically needs a party of 8? Is completing a trial with a party of NPCs considered soloing, since you didn't involve any other actual human players?

If so, then I guess I already soloed the easiest Trial. Though the NPC party is really quite useful in that they keep each other well-healed and manage to keep the enemies' focus off me, almost without fail. Being out of range and running around constantly...I imagine myself a little like a very annoying mosquito or wasp to a person who is already being bitten at by a dog, a cat, and a rat...I don't get targeted or hit all that often. So I almost never need healing and when I do, potions or Second Wind tend to cover it. (Though Second Wind is rather weak healing at this point.)

Anyway, thanks; I'm not the type who'd mind having someone do some nuking for me Will come to roll around in pouty dismay when I do finally encounter the first Trial I can't solo.

[Bluie]

The Trials in ARR vary from being 4-8 depending. Ifrit is a 4 party I know for sure, but I can't remember if the next ones have the NPCs programmed into them or not yet. I barely touch ARR stuff synced anymore so my memory is spotty. Soloing is without any real person help, so yeah, you're good. The goal is to eventually have everything be soloable, but dungeons are coming first and then Trials. Only Stormblood doesn't have NPC companions programed into it yet, but it's next up. If you do get to Stormblood before they implement it, I can do those dungeons with you too. I can't nuke them like the other older content, but I've soloed every Stormblood dungeon at least once as they're not complicated with a high damaging class with healing utility (or a Tank, but I don't play that class often.) It's Shadowbringers and Endwalker Trials that will be an eventual problem, but we'll worry about that later. I can always call some friends over to help when the time comes.

[Kikki]

Ah, I see. I thought the thing I went through to get to Ifrit WAS a dungeon, since I thought you had to have a party of real people to tackle a trial. It wasn't until this morning that I realized Ifrit was a trial boss, not a regular dungeon boss. Well, he was definitely more difficult. For me, anyway, since I hadn't figured out a few basics at that point, lol.

Being only a third of the way through all ARR content, that stuff is definitely a ways off, even if I pursue the story exclusively. Sometimes I try, but I get distracted by my class quests (just did the level 45 class quest and am about to recover the choral attire pieces.) PLUS...I do still want to do some ACNH dailies (so much change...I need the comforting boredom of ACNH routines, lol) and since Harvestella is on sale the next 11 days, I'm more likely than not to grab it. FFXIV's story isn't compelling enough yet, to make me want to play it exclusively. When/if it gets super interesting, then I won't want to put it down for anything else, but that's not the case, yet.

And Harvestella is getting a better response from the Fogu crowd than I thought it would. (I don't really care much about the response outside of Fogu since they don't tend to have the necessary love of the farmin'-sim life to make their opinions match up closely enough with mine. Though I don't know how the gamer world at large is receiving Harvestella.) That makes me think the stress I felt while playing the demo must either not be an issue in the full game, or got fixed by tweaks made by the devs thanks to the response to that demo.

[simside]

Welcome back and congrats Ryume! Hopefully things will be a little less crazy for you with grad school off your plate.

Thanks Mikodesu and Kikki! Yeah, it seems less common now. Growing up, most kids I knew were one of three or four, (I was one of six by the time I finished highschool, lol) but most people my age now rarely have more than two. Hopefully everything will go well next month. I know I never envisioned myself as a mom playing videogames as a kid, my mother sure didn't, but here I am. The kids all love Animal Crossing, Zelda, and farming games, so I think we're raising them right, lol.

Congrats greensara! Hope everything goes well for you, and good luck with your new baby! So exciting!

Congrats to you as well, Ryume! I am in the same boat of never ever going back to school ever again, my last couple years were rough.

Thanks to mikodesu and greensara too, for the Harvestella hype. I was super on the fence for this one, and I have so much on my farming sim plate, but the story (and sale!) is pushing me over the edge. My parents usually give me a video game for Christmas, and I think I may ask for this. It will be in my backlog (which is REALLY LONG ^_^;;;;), but it seems like a good choice.

My backlog is stressing me out, mostly because I've been super busy and haven't been getting much play time during the week. I got a few hours of P5R in on Friday, but I've been busy this weekend, so I don't even get to knock out a chunk on my days off. -_-; I haven't been able to play Moonlighter either, and I just want to finish that.

Boring life complaints:

Spoiler:

Most of my bad mood is that I have to commute a lot for work, and the commute turns into a disaster during the holidays. It rained on Wednesday, and I spent 2.5 hours gridlocked in traffic at night to commute home. So I mostly just go to bed when I get home. Thankfully, I don't have to drive anywhere on weekends, but it is well below freezing today, and I need to walk out to do some errands. ;_;

Being burned out is more conducive to picross and VNs. I've been getting in some Overlord Picross at lunch and before I fall asleep, and I should be able to finish that next week. I won't have a reason to not play short sessions of Moonlighter once I finish, so I'm hoping it'll only take a few more sessions of that. Then, Even if Tempest! I'm looking forward to having a vn to play again.

I absolutely don't need any more games, but the new Digimon game coming out next year looks great. Totally my speed. I'm going to try and play at least the Cyber Sleuth games before it comes out... which aren't very similar, but I think I'll enjoy those too, and it'll make me feel less guilty for buying the new one.

[Bluie]

Liyue's exploration is finished! Including the Chasm both inside and out! I was slowly going insane over the last percentile for awhile but I finally got it and then immediately went to bed lol. Puppy was napping on my lap the majority of the time so it was a good session just have her be comfortable despite my frustration lol. Now I just have Enkanomiya, which I'm not super looking forward to doing because it's a pain to explore. BUT, I do have the Wanderer now so maybe it'll be more tolerable with him. Legit can't wait to fully dive into Sumeru proper. I have so many Aranara to find still lol.

[Kikki]

I've hit that point. I now find ACNH's dailies tedious rather than soothing, again. Well, it was always going to be a short-lived thing. Greenhouse sale was final on Friday, but mom will move out of our (their!) house on the same property until April, so I can still fairly freely go there until spring. After that, I can only go back to shop. It'll be VERY WEIRD to shop there like a...like an outsider, lol...to obey the signs that say 'employees only', lol, barring off the rear greenhouses and access to the office and house. I probably won't go back much, it'll be too uncomfortable...anything I can grow from seed, I will.

~

FFXIV is doing a thing that annoys me. It's not new, it's just how it works. It's how they handle changing professions.

I decided to try leveling up botany. Pulled out my saw, which popped all of Dax's clothes off again. Okay, I had a few things he could wear in my inventory, so I put them on him so as not to be arrested for streaking. (Not sure if you can be arrested for going out in your undies rather than actually nude, but decided not to take a chance.) This means of course that my stats were all WAY lower, but...whatever, Dax is still a tough level 50 dude in a level 5 region, he should be fine!

Apparently not. Apparently, changing the item you hold COMPLETELY CHANGES THE PERSON YOU ARE. Two seconds ago you were a weapon-wielding badass who can take down entire armies on his own, but now that you're holding something else, you're as weak as a toddler and have to run away when attacked by a level ten grunt. Dax, you can split that scorpion thing in two with one blow of your pinkie! WHY ARE YOU PRETENDING YOU SUDDENLY COULDN'T SO MUCH AS SMUSH AN ANT? Just pick the bow back up and kill it!

But no. That's not how FFXIV works. When he's holding a saw, he's not an archer and he remembers nothing about ever having been an archer. He can't even figure out how to wear an archer's clothes; he gets so confused when he holds a saw that all the clothes simply fall off his body.

Anyway, I REALLY dislike that. Why can't I learn botany as a side job or hobby? Why do I have to pretend I'm a whole new person whose entire life revolves around botany, just to learn about it? It's making me want to forget about learning any of the crafting or gathering stuff, cuz they've made it too much of a hassle. It's not like you can complete the game as a carpenter or botanist, as far as I know, so what's the point in pretending to LIVE as a botanist, rather than just taking part in it on the side?

Well, since I'm not enjoying pursuing other content, I guess I can't put Titan off any longer. Gotta go into that dungeon with my NPC pals and see if we can beat him up sufficiently. I suspect it will take many tries since they've probably made it so that winning has a specific trick (like destroying Ifrit's nail so he doesn't one-shot wipe your party when his HP drops to a certain level.) I checked, and it appears that the first four primal trials can be done with a party of NPCs, though I haven't tested that out in game, except with Ifrit. We'll see! I'll probably do that today.

~

My corrective/therapy exercises made me dizzy today. Dunno if that means 'stop', or if I'm supposed to ignore it, lol. Pretty sure you're supposed to push through some discomfort, but...how much? I get in trouble for doing too much. I wish I had some kind of little colour-coded meter in me somewhere that could tell me these things.

[Code_Name_Geek]

I didn't end up finishing Trials and Tribulations or RF4S before Pokémon day (which was the 16th for me) but I did pick up and complete a game called Dinogotchi, which is inspired by Tamagotchis. I really like the concept of it, but the execution was a bit rough and it could use some polish. It also felt like the game couldn't decide between being an active game and an app that ran in the background and check occasionally (more like a traditional virtual pet) - it didn't have enough variety to be an active game but the clock ran too fast to leave it unattended for long. Luckily I paid less than 2$ for it so I don't feel like I lost out on too much.

Like I mentioned, I started Pokémon Violet on Friday and chose Fuecoco as my starter. Then something totally unprecedented happened to me and I ran into a shiny female Lechonk on the first route! I was already planning on having a male Oinkologne on my team so I probably won't use it for the main story, but Lechonk is my favourite Pokémon from this generation so far and the shiny is really nice (it's pink!) so I'm happy about it. I've gotten past the school tutorial part and beaten the first gym, but the openness of the objectives is a tad overwhelming for me so not sure what I'll do next. It wouldn't be so bad if there was level scaling and the order you did them in didn't matter, but supposedly they have a level curve as if they were designed to be done in a linear order, which is a strange design choice imo. Anyways, I kind of want to wrap the main story of this up before the end of the year, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time with the holidays and everything so it's not a defined goal.

[Bluie]

Kiki, you may want to register some class sets and then register them to hotbars so you can have quick change when you need it. It doesn't completely fix your issue, but it help to have then on hand outside of a menu. I switch between my combat and crafter/gatherer classes with the click of a button and it helps a lot.

Funnily enough, the orginal version of the game let Gatherer/Crafter classes do the story the same as combat classes, but you did puzzles instead of combat lol. Not really what you're looking for, but a funny thing to look back on.

[Kikki]

Kiki, you may want to register some class sets and then register them to hotbars so you can have quick change when you need it. It doesn't completely fix your issue, but it help to have then on hand outside of a menu. I switch between my combat and crafter/gatherer classes with the click of a button and it helps a lot.

Funnily enough, the orginal version of the game let Gatherer/Crafter classes do the story the same as combat classes, but you did puzzles instead of combat lol. Not really what you're looking for, but a funny thing to look back on.

Oh? Interesting. Probably not what most MMO or RPG players are looking for, but that'd be really unique in a MMORPG...letting a botanist (etc) be the hero by solving puzzles instead of battling. I do have two sets of clothes saved...the bard one (that I got for completing the level 50 bard class quest) and the one I actually wear, with the really highest stats of everything I've got, plus a glamour over top to streamline the look. I don't like poofy clothes on Dax, he actually has a well-proportioned, lean ripply body; why on earth would I put the lad in, say, pumpkin pants? So many of the clothes make him look like a misshapen oaf...he really looks best in his undies, sadly. If only those undies could cast a steel shell around him when attacked, it'd be tempting to let him just go around in them.

I don't have them registered to hotbars, though. Didn't know you could set an outfit to the hotbar

Turns out beating Titan was the work of about three minutes. (It was also the first music I've made note of really liking in FFXIV so far.) The battle ended all of a sudden and I thought I'd lost to a massive attack or something, but...no, we'd won. The black screen was just the battle ending and transitioning into a cutscene. Why was he so easy?? No special tricks at all! Well, not that I mind.

But then that was done and the story moved on and things got...hrmph. Well, I'm hard to move, so I was just vaguely upset and perplexed, but then that nun (maybe?) had to go and be all relentlessly sympathetic and it was like a toddler who falls and scrapes their knee and doesn't show a single blink of being upset until mom comes and gives them sympathy for their boo-boo. Darn it, was that the guy I liked in Costa del Sol? Where are the others? I dunno what's going on, atm. I've gotta go find some people. I need a headcount! No, a full roll call. I'm not even sure who is missing and who isn't. I know the pink one and the short one, but I didn't get a look at any of the others.

But I didn't have time to check where all my people were at, had to actually do life stuff, for once. But I'll find them later!

[Bluie]

In the character menu (the one where you press the triangle button to register/update your equipment) there's a tab that you can open that shows all your sets. You can drag and drop them onto hotbars or use a menu command to do so. Bringing back that hud pic for a sec:

Spoiler:

To the far right the four icons on the top of the vertical hot bar are my Dancer, White Mage, Alchemist, and Botanist icons that are registered to the set in that tab. They always will be unless you delete/save over them (and be careful not to do so! You'll have to remake it if you do). Using this I can change on the fly whenever I need to, and as long as you're not in combat, it works just fine.

And yeah, Titan is kind of a pushover because his mechanics boil down to: don't step on the glowing thing that's very easy to avoid. Later Trials are more interesting, but base ARR didn't want to scare people off I think lol. There are harder versions of the battles that you can unlock later, but they're still pretty easy (though they weren't 10 years ago!)

[Kikki]

Thanks, Bluie If I decide to get back into leveling up some gathering/crafting skills, I'll set up some outfits to make the transition from a well-kitted Bard down to a newbie botanist less tedious.

For now, though, I have SO MUCH to do that I may as well just keep at the MSQ. Dax is already level 54...he's definitely gonna hit 60 before I'm even done the ARR content, let alone the Heavensward stuff that follows within the scope of the free trial.

PLus I just started making friends with...tribes, I guess this game is calling it. I'd wished for reputation I could see with all these quests I"m finishing for everybody, and I guess I sort of just got it. The first one wasn't a surprise at all, but the second tribe...well, I kind of thought there might be something like this, but I wasn't really expecting to be right. Also wasn't expecting to have to change from War to Hand to do certain quest lines, but I guess that's kind of interesting.

I just finished up...uh...Coerthas? Northern area with all snow and cold. Saddest region I've been in yet! I swear everyone was getting lost and dying of starvation or climate or etc. Even the monsters looked like they were starving to death. I really liked that area though, because I did 20 or 30 quests all packed into a relatively small area...efficiency makes things more fun It's also what really impressed upon me that this cataclysm happened very recently, that this world is still in the middle of trying to cope with all the changes it caused. When the game first started, I somehow thought it was something long in the past...probably because that's how most stories do this kind of post-apocalypse scenario. I guess this was like a half-apocalypse that left just enough of society standing for people to try to scrape it back together in weirdly changed circumstances.

Possibly. I'm not totally clear on it. Either because I missed something already shown, or I'm not yet far enough to get it.