The Dreamwidth Account

Hi all,

Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Lately, my main interest has been FFXIV - I've been playing it for over a year now, but I've managed to get one character through the main sequence on "A Realm Reborn" (the original patch 2.0 content from ten years ago) and I'm now getting into all the various trials, raids, 8-person dungeons and so on. (If I'm speaking gibberish, let me know, and I'll slow down and provide definitions). I've just joined a free company about a week ago, and this character has been on the Novice Network for a while, which has been useful, so I've been doing a lot of chatting there.

I'm quite enjoying it, although I'm currently finding the whole raiding thing to be somewhat chaotic and overwhelming. I'm sure there's a gaming culture thing in there somewhere which explains why people seem to do group content in MMOs at top speed - I mean, I've yet to see a single bus stop anywhere in any of them, so it can't be that the characters have a bus to catch. But I'm much more of a "can we slow down and take our time about this?" type - I mean, we spend hours waiting around for alliance parties to form, surely we can make all that waiting worthwhile by taking our time going through the content and appreciating the work the developers have put in?

(I suspect this is my neurodiversity showing).

I'm currently on two weeks leave from work - a staycation rather than a vacation, because I'm going to be using the time to get a whole heap of errands that have been outstanding dealt with. Things like dealing with some personal matters, getting various bits and pieces done around the house, and seeing about sourcing a new computer.

Yup, my current PC has reached the point where I'm looking at it and going "y'know what? This isn't going to do anymore." It's always been a bit sub-optimal on the gaming side of things (Steam running tends to bring the poor thing to a near-halt) and I haven't even tried to run FFXIV on it (I play FFXIV on the PS4), because I think it would literally have a meltdown at me and die. But I've started using Discord (Free Company thing) and running Discord is enough that this PC is busy grumbling and groaning and slowing down ridiculously. So I'm looking at replacing it with a proper gaming-capable machine - something where I can run FFXIV and Discord at the same time, the way the cool kids are doing these days. As a challenge, I'm going to be looking for a gaming PC which doesn't light up the house like a disco ball - I'm sure it's possible.

So, that's what I've been up to. How about you?

I bought myself a PS4, because it's been a while between drinks, so to speak. I also got myself four games to go with it - the Kingdom Hearts "oh, all right, catch up!" remix pack (KH 1.5 and 2.5 remix double pack - basically "the entire story so far on one platform rather than three"); Dissidia NT (beating up various Final Fantasy protagonists and villains for fun and... well, fun, really); Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age (the high-definition update, with the new character building system which isn't as flexible as the original one); and Final Fantasy XV (which bills itself as a final fantasy for fans and newcomers alike).

I spent all of yesterday playing Final Fantasy XV, and I have learned two important things. Firstly, the Final Fantasy team at Square Enix are going all out to try and convey the ultimate in realism through their graphical work. Secondly, this means I really can't be in the room while the characters are going from place to place in their sports car.

The first is pretty easy to expand on: the realism of their architecture and design work in this game is stunning (and gives me a lot of hope for what I'm eventually going to see in the FF7 remake[1]). The buildings, unlike most RPG designs, are pretty much like what you'd expect from this world - a lot of them are pretty much copied directly from this world. The landscapes are largely believable geography and geology, with only occasional forays into what I call "Nibel Geology" (have a look at the Nibel mountains in Final Fantasy VII for what I'm meaning there: mountain shapes which appear to have been designed by the Rule of Cool rather than ordinary old rules of geology and weathering). Which means you don't have lines of mountains intersecting at right angles and so on. Steve, who is something of a graphics connoisseur, assures me their work on the landscapes is brilliant. I'm willing to take his word for it, because I can't really see to much of them, to be honest.

The reason for that is the second thing: I can't be in the room while the characters are driving from place to place, because the level of realism is so great that it really plays havoc with my over-sensitive proprioception, and I get motion sickness (or rather, lack-of-motion sickness) from watching the characters drive from one place to the next. The mismatch between the motion I'm seeing on the screen, and the lack of motion I'm experiencing sitting on the couch is enough to make me extremely queasy if I watch them driving from place to place for too long. So I'll tend to start the driving on auto, and then head out of the room while they go to their next destination, and come back when they've arrived, in an effort to keep my stomach where it belongs. Even then, I've been needing to chomp regularly on some crystallised ginger in an effort to keep the queases at bay.

Oh, and one more thing I've learned: I need to actually reduce the size of the visual field on the screen, because the edges of the game "screen" are sliding off the edges of my physical television set. So, something to deal with when I switch the PS4 on again tomorrow.

But overall it's been fun, and I certainly don't think I'm going to have wasted the money I spent.

[1] Which is, in fact, the reason why I bought this particular console in the first place. Now I just have to wait for it to finish being vapour-ware.