1463: Losing Face

I've been off Facebook for some time now — a cursory search through these pages suggests I closed my account in October of last year — and for the most part I haven't missed it.

I certainly haven't missed the endlessly inane reshares of content from George Takei('s PR intern) which in turn was stuff that already did the rounds on Reddit and subsequently Twitter several days earlier.

I also haven't missed the few people who seem to think that Facebook is an appropriate platform for standing atop their soapbox and bellowing the most ill-informed political and/or sociological opinions they can possibly think of.

I also haven't missed having shit games and advertising jammed forcibly down my throat every time I log in. I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing Facebook games professionally and all it left me with was a bitterly passionate desire to never play one ever again.

And yet…

Over the weekend I went out. This is nothing unusual in itself, but this was something of a special occasion — it was a reunion of sorts for those of us who studied music at the University of Southampton between 1999 and 2002. We were a pretty close-knit bunch while we were there — though I must confess, being a joint-honours English and Music student, that I always felt somewhat on the periphery of this particular social group — and most people have kept in touch pretty well ever since. A number of us are still in Southampton, too, though a distressingly small number of us are actually doing anything with our music studies professionally. (Note to kids planning their future: when someone tells you that a particular degree is a "good, general choice that will get you into most careers," they are talking bollocks.)

Anyway, yeah. We went out to a pub near Newbury and ate our respective body weights in roast dinners and custard-covered desserts. It was thoroughly pleasant, particularly as I hadn't seen some of these people for a while.

It's partly my fault, of course — I could have very easily picked up the phone and invited them over for dinner, or coffee, or whatever, but I haven't. But then they haven't either. I don't say this with bitterness — it's just the way that the rapid pace of modern 21st century life makes people think. Real-life friendships often fall by the wayside somewhat, and people whom you once spent every day with become people that you see a couple of times a year — albeit on those occasions, you'll start singing improvised offensive German barbershop a cappella as if no time whatsoever had passed between the last couple of times you saw one another. (At least you will if you are me and my friends.)

The thing is, though, for many people, Facebook fills that gap between in-person interactions — or "face time" as obnoxious wankers like to call it. It allows you to remind each other of your existence, and to likewise acknowledge one another's existence with a Like or a Comment.

At least, that's the intention. One might argue that said intention has been somewhat diluted over the last few years as Facebook has become less and less about meaningful social interactions and more and more about sharing viral content in an attempt to amass as many Likes, comments and shares as possible.

Having almost missed out on this reunion due to my non-presence on Facebook, I find myself questioning my decision to leave the network. It also makes me ponder whether or not it might be possible to use it in a different way — specifically, to have a substantial cull of my friends list to just those who are local and whom I am likely to want to see again at some point. I'd cut out any Pages that I was following — not that I think I was following many in the first place — and keep my friends list down in the double-digits if at all possible. I'd be ruthless in the culling of people who didn't post anything interesting or useful and consequently cluttered up my news feed with bullshit, and I'd lock down my account so I'd be in complete control of who could find me. I'd also minimise overlap between Facebook and Twitter, because what's the point?

I'm tempted to try this, though with all the changes I've seen Facebook make regarding how it decides what it wants to show to you, I have my doubts as to how useful the service is even with these attempts to take ownership of the experience. It certainly can't hurt to give it a go, anyway, and if it does turn out to be useless nonsense as I suspect, it's little bother to simply hit the "deactivate" button again.

I'll leave you with this, which is a big part of my hesitance to return:

1462: Filthy Lucre

lucre There are many things that bug me about free-to-play games — specifically, those of the mobile and Facebook variety — but one of my biggest bugbears is the ability to purchase in-game currency. Frustratingly, this is an option that has transcended its free-to-play origins and is now starting to infest other types of game — including full-price retail games on the new consoles.

The ability to purchase currency is usually touted as a time-saving feature that eliminates the need for grinding. In some cases, it's simply that — an option. In others, it becomes abundantly clear before very long that the game's economy has been balanced on the assumption that most players probably will purchase in-game currency at some point, and consequently those who just want to play the game without having to get their credit card out every ten minutes can just go fuck themselves.

Now, in many ways, choice is a good thing. Not everyone has time to spend earning virtual money in games to achieve somethingorother. But does that mean they should have the option to spend real money in order to get ahead in the game? I'm not so sure.

You see, the second you put that option there, it devalues the efforts of those willing to put in the work to earn the money themselves. Why would you bother working for something if you can just throw money at it, effectively paying to not play the game?

The reason I bring this up is that my Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV has started saving up for a medium-sized plot of land on which to build a house for guild activities. We already have a small plot, but the shed-like house that fits on the small plots is already full to bursting with the furniture that the crafters have been churning out. Consequently, active members of the guild have been working together to earn money in order to purchase one of the larger plots, which allows you to build significantly larger houses.

This evening, we spent a couple of hours in a "spiritbonding party" — we grouped up together, equipped with items of jewelry that weren't part of our normal equipment loadout, and then proceeded to battle hordes of monsters until said pieces of jewelry were "spiritbonded" to us — a mechanic in Final Fantasy XIV that means you can then break the item of equipment down and turn it into "materia". Materia are items that can be socketed into pieces of equipment for various stat bonuses, and certain among them — particularly the better ones — sell for pretty high prices due to their usefulness in completing the high-level "A Relic Reborn" quest that culminates in a character acquiring their almost-best weapon.

As you may have surmised already, someone in the guild had the bright idea of mass-producing a bunch of these jewelry items, taking them to an area with enemies that respawned quickly, and then indulging in some mass Water Sprite genocide until we had all Spiritbonded with the items enough to turn them into materia. We could then sell the resulting materia and plough some (or all, depending on how generous we were feeling) of the profits into our fundraising efforts for the new house.

The point is, while the act of going through the spiritbonding process is rather tedious — it largely involves killing lots of things that you're way overpowered for — it was something that brought a lot of us together for an enjoyable time. The experience was meaningful, worthwhile and even fun for the fact we were working together on it, even though the actual things we were doing were pretty mindless. And, when each of us successfully and finally spiritbonded with the items we had equipped, there was a feeling of achievement; a feeling of achievement that amplified considerably when the little message popped up on screen some time later saying that the materia we created had sold for a respectable amount of money; a feeling of achievement that amplified even more when voluntarily donating some of our own in-game currency to the guild coffers.

Everything I've described above would have been utterly meaningless had the option to purchase currency been in there. Attaining the medium-sized house would have felt like a hollow victory, as we wouldn't have done it through our skill and dedication to the game — we'd have done it through how deep our collective pockets are. That carries no meaning in the game world; one of the nicest things about Final Fantasy XIV's land of Eorzea is that the real world never intrudes. There's no "cash shop", the game never once asks you for your credit card details — you set up your subscription before you start playing — and once you're in the virtual world, everything you do relates to the virtual world somehow. It's a highly immersive experience, and one of the best things about the game.

Drop in a "Buy Gil" button and that goes out of the window. When working hard to attain something challenging in the game that costs a lot of money, the thought would always be there: "I wonder if I should just pay up and get it instead." And sure, it's certainly nice in the short term to be able to buy your way to victory — but in the long run, it's much more satisfying to know that everything you've achieved is because you've put the effort in.

A bit like life, you know.

1461: Day After Day

Jan 18 -- 1461 Every so often when I sit down to write this blog thing every day, I look at the number before the post title and think "bloody hell, that's a lot of posts." Then I think "bloody hell, that's quite a long time I've been doing this."

Of course, given that my day job involves writing lots of things every day, it's perhaps arguable whether or not having written a single post on here every day for the last 1,461 days is as impressive as it once was, but I like to think it still shows a certain degree of dedication and commitment on my part. And, given that I'm not the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking particularly good things about themselves, that's one thing with concrete evidence that I can specifically point to and say "yes, that's good; that's something I can be pleased with."

I feel doubly pleased when I think back to how this all started. For those who have joined me recently, the basic gist was this: a few UK-based writers got together and decided to write something every day, initially for a year. I joined quite late in January in that first year, and haven't stopped since. Interestingly, a significant number of the people who started that first year also gave up very quickly — the person I regard as the "founder" simply bowed out with a tweet that said "fuck #oneaday" one day and never picked it up again — but others stuck it out for most or even all of that first year.

Following that, I managed to organise a ragtag group of bloggers into a group who helped motivate each other somewhat, and in the process we raised a bit of money for charity. Again, though, relatively few people made it through the whole year, but I stood firm. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only one of the original participants from either of those first couple of years to still be blogging on a daily basis and while I may not always have a lot of meaningful things to say, I still sit down and write every day, regardless.

Because it wasn't necessarily about writing something meaningful or useful. It was just about writing. As with any creative endeavour, regardless of how ambitious it is, the only way to get better and refine your craft is to continue doing it as often as possible. You might just discover a few things about yourself in the process.

For my part, I've discovered — well, confirmed, really — that writing is a good outlet for me. If stress and anxiety is starting to build up in my head, as it often does, writing this post each day is a good means of venting some of that steam. I don't even necessarily have to write specifically about what I'm stressed or anxious about; if you look back to the period on this blog where my marriage was falling apart and I was in a seriously bad place mental health-wise, you'll notice that a lot of the posts are considerably more creative than they perhaps are now. I don't think this is coincidental at all; misery appears to beget creativity, which may account for the whole "tortured artist" stereotype.

Note: I do not advocate the seeking out of misery purely to get your own creative juices flowing, but if, for whatever reason, you're not in a good place, use that negative energy to make something. It doesn't have to be good. But it can help.

Anyway. I think that's enough blabbering on for now. Just another day in the increasingly long list.

1460: Flexitime

Jan 17 -- Time Where's all the time gone?

I'm not talking about the year zipping by — we're still in January when I last checked, so things are proceeding at about the right pace there — but instead I am talking about the time within each individual day. I know that reasonably speaking each day absolutely isn't any shorter than it normally is, but it certainly feels like it at the moment for some reason. I feel like I used to be able to fit more things into the day, whereas now I seem to spend the majority of the day working, a little while chilling out in the evening and then before I know it it's after midnight and I should be sleeping.

This is, as you might expect, somewhat frustrating. There are things I want to do, see. Lots of things. And, as any respectable human being in the 21st century will almost certainly tell you, there is rarely enough time to do everything you want to do. This seems to be a particular issue at present.

Perhaps I'm just trying to squeeze too many things into too short a space of time, and I should be more realistic about things. In fact, let's try a little exercise: let's list all the things that I want and/or need to do, and determine which of them can wait a bit and which of them I can probably squeeze in to the time I have. I am thinking out loud here, which is probably terribly tedious to those of you good enough to still be reading at this point, but eh. I've started, so I may as well finish.

I present, then, in no particular order, The (Possibly) Definitive List of Things I'd Like to Do (Perhaps on a Regular Basis), 2014 Edition, Not Including Things to Do With Other People.

Finish watching the anime Clannad. (Eminently doable; I'm watching an episode with breakfast and sometimes lunch each day right now, and there's only 20-something of them.)
Watch the anime series Ghost Hunt, Hell Girl and whatever I've been adding to my Crunchyroll queue over the last year or so. (Also eminently doable; do not start until Clannad is finished to minimise confusion.)
Study Japanese. (Currently attending weekly evening classes, and have just signed up for a second semester; in order to progress further, I both want and need to set aside some time each week for self-study, not necessarily every day, but at least two or three times a week, I'd say. Perhaps this is something to do in the morning.)
Make my game. (Haven't worked on this for ages, but still really want to get it done. At the same time, I find it difficult to believe I will ever get it done. Again, a case of setting aside regular time each week, I think; perhaps on days when I'm not doing Japanese self-study.)
Play the visual novels and dating sims I have on my shelf that I haven't even touched yet. These include Saya no Uta, Tokimeki Check-In, Yumina the Ethereal and a number of others. (Requires a think. How can I fit these into daily life? Should I finish some other games first, or treat them more like "books" and, say, read in bed or something? Or perhaps play them when I would "normally" watch anime?)
Repeat plays of visual novels I haven't seen all the paths of. These include Aselia the Eternal (super-long, lots of paths), Deus Machina Demonbane (quite long, few paths) and possibly some others. (See above.)
Play the bajillion PS1, PS2 and PS3 RPGs I have on my shelf. There's about fifteen years' worth of games there. Fuck next-gen.
Play more music. (Stop making excuses and set aside 30-60 minutes a day to do so. The piano's right there.)
Finish ZHP on PSP/Vita. (Need to not be playing any other RPGs first in order to concentrate on this, and perhaps even start again altogether.)
Get my Final Fantasy XIV white mage to level 50. (Eminently doable at the rate I'm going.)
Write something long-form, either a non-fiction book on some aspect of gaming (perhaps visual novels) or a novel, then publish it somehow. (The latter I've sort of done for the last few years on this blog each November, but more planning and editing is required to make something worth paying for.)
Forgive the few people who have wronged me and for whom I hold grudges. (Never gonna happen. I don't hold many grudges, but the few I do are, to me, entirely justified.)
Get back into walking, running, fitness, some combination thereof, without getting demotivated that they don't obviously make me any smaller.

I'm sure there are more, but I think that's probably plenty to be getting on with for now.

Whew. I think I might need to go back to making myself a schedule and trying to stick to it again.

1459: What the Person in That Car is Trying to Say

Jan 16 -- Driving During particularly long and boring drives — down a particularly tedious stretch of motorway, for example — I often find my mind wandering in various ways, pondering various subjects.

One of the things that occasionally pops into my head is a sort of "what if?" scenario about how communication between vehicles could work. If you've ever played a '90s or '00s space sim, you'll know that it's implied that most spacecraft have an always-open communication channel allowing them to be hailed by other pilots and installations, and it always feels fairly natural.

Were we to have an equivalent for our roadgoing vehicles today, the results would be anything but natural, since it would provide those with road rage with the ability to directly yell at people without having to stop and get out of their car, and it would also open the real world up to griefing and trolling. Of course, it might also facilitate helpful communication, but, well, the Internet has taught me to be something of a pessimist when it comes to forms of communication.

But if we consider the way that people in cars communicate with each other now, it's clear that there's something of a problem. Allow me to elaborate.

What is happening: The brake lights on the car in front of you are flickering.
What it means: The car in front is being driven by an old person.
Or: The car in front is suffering from a loose connection to its brake lights.
Or: The driver of the car in front isn't quite comfortable with exactly how hard you need to press the brake pedal to keep it under control.
Or: The driver of the car in front is trying to send you some sort of message using Morse code.

What is happening: The car in front is continuing to drive forwards, but it has put its hazard warning flashers on.
What it means: There is a hazard.
Or: The car in front has broken down and is coasting to a smooth stop.
Or: "Thank you."
Or: "Fuck you."
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this also means "I am parking here," regardless of whether parking is permitted here.

What is happening: The car in front is approaching a junction and its indicators are not flashing.
What it means: The car in front is going straight on.
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this may mean "I am turning left" or "I am turning right".

What is happening: The car behind you is flashing its headlights.
What it means: "Hello!"
Or: "You're going too slowly."
Or: "You're going too fast."
Or: "Thank you."
Or: "Fuck you."
Or: "Look at my headlights, I bought them at Halfords, aren't they bright?"
Or: "You should probably turn on your headlights, it is dark after all and I nearly ran into the back of you, you cretin."

What is happening: The driver of the car in front is making a gesture that looks like he is tenderly stroking two invisible, curved penises.
What it means: I have no fucking idea, but I saw this once and it's haunted me ever since.

1458: Wonderful!

tw101 I was fortunate enough to catch a pricing error on Nintendo's Web store yesterday — I didn't even know they had a Web store until yesterday, incidentally — that enabled me to score copies of The Wonderful 101 and Pikmin 3 for Wii U for just £8.95 each. It was touch-and-go as to whether Nintendo would honour these low prices, as it is any time a pricing error such as this comes up, but fortunately they honoured my purchase and I'm now the proud owner of digital copies of both of the aforementioned games. (I'd normally prefer physical, but my Wii U isn't exactly heaving with other downloads, so I can live with these two being boxless.)

You may ask why I didn't already own these two games, given that many Wii U owners regard one, the other or both as among the best games on the console. Well, the simple answer is that I wasn't sure if I'd like either of them — and certainly not enough to drop £50 on them. £8.95, while a relatively high price compared to what you can pick up in a Steam sale, is well within "impulse purchase" territory, however, and I was happy to give them both a go for that price.

I tried The Wonderful 101 tonight. I have enjoyed the Platinum games I've played to date — particularly Bayonetta, which in retrospect is probably one of my favourite games of the console generation just gone — but had heard that this was somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with. As such, I approached it with a certain degree of trepidation.

It is somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with, but much like Bayonetta rewarded you spending some time with it and getting to know how everything worked, so too does this game — and it doesn't take all that long to get your head around what's going on enough to improve your end-level ranking by a considerable degree.

For the uninitiated, The Wonderful 101 is a bizarre game in which you play a small army of superheroes as they attempt to fend off an alien invasion. The entire band moves as a group following whichever character is currently marked as the "leader", and various button presses can cause their formation to expand or contract.

The key mechanic in combat is making use of the "Wonder Line", which allows you to do various things with your small army of minions. By drawing shapes on the touchscreen of the Wii U GamePad or twiddling the right stick in various ways, you can perform "Unite" attacks — drawing a circle causes a number of the party to form a giant fist, for example, while drawing a straight line allows them to form a sword. You can also stretch your line of heroes over gaps and up walls to make bridges and ladders, too, and in order to snag some of the levels' secrets it's entirely necessary to do this.

The game is obviously very different to Bayonetta, which focused on a single character with a diverse variety of skills, but it also has a number of things in common with its spiritual precursor. For starters, all the enemies have distinctive "tells" to show when they're about to attack, and by learning these you'll know when to dodge and when to make use of the hilarious "Unite Guts" move, in which the entire party morphs into a giant pudding and shields against an attack. In Bayonetta, dodging attacks was key to the experience as it allowed you to trigger "Witch Time" in which time slowed down and you could send your score into orbit; in The Wonderful 101 it's a much more practical affair — it simply prevents you from taking damage, though in some cases, successfully blocking can rebound projectiles back at enemies or flip armoured vehicles onto their rooves.

I've only played two levels so far — both of them twice — but having got a handle on how everything works relatively quickly I now feel I "get" what the game is doing and look forward to trying more. I don't know if I'll end up obsessing over it quite as much as I did with Bayonetta when that first came out, but it's certainly got a lot of the same ingredients — and if you're a Wii U owner who has enjoyed Platinum's other work, I'd say you probably can't go all that far wrong with this.

1457: Escape, Again

escape Enjoyed our bi-weekly board gaming session with some of my local friends tonight, and it was the first opportunity to get a number of games to our communal table — though sadly we didn't quite have time to get to play all of them.

I was particularly curious to see how Escape: The Curse of the Temple played with more than two people, though, and as predicted, it's incredibly chaotic — at least initially. After a while, you start to realise you don't necessarily have to be as quick as possible, you simply have to be methodical and careful.

For those unfamiliar with Escape and/or those who didn't read my original post on the subject, it's a real-time cooperative board game in which the group of players has ten minutes of real time to escape from a collapsing temple. In order to do so, they need to activate a certain number of "magic gems" along the way — and, of course, find the exit, which is somewhere among the randomly generated complex of rooms.

Gameplay in Escape is initially bewildering if you're not ready for it. Being a real-time game, you don't take "turns" as such; everyone is doing their thing at the same time — primarily rolling dice. In order to reveal new rooms, for example, you need to roll two "adventurer" symbols; in order to move into a room, you need to roll a specific combination of two symbols. Rolling black masks temporarily puts dice out of commission, and rolling golden masks "heals" up to two black masks, and other players in the same room as you are able to use their golden masks to heal you.

Given the seemingly short span of time in which you have to escape the temple, it's easy to run around in a blind panic and lose track of what everyone else is doing. But success in Escape is more contingent on cooperation than the initially chaotic-seeming premise may lead you to believe. It rewards teamwork and communication, with the most efficient route to success appearing to be to split into teams and work together to discover the rooms that allow you to acquire the greatest number of magic gems as efficiently as possible.

Despite its heavily random nature — it's all about rolling dice as quickly as possible — there's a surprising amount of depth to this fast-paced game. The ability to "hold" dice you haven't used to perform an action allows you to reduce your chances of rolling symbols you might need to achieve something in the name of being prepared for something else. And if you play with the optional "Curses and Treasures" modules included in the base set, there's even greater depth — curses provide distractions from your main task, while treasures offer you alternative means of achieving your goals.

It's a really interesting game and all the more notable for unfolding in just ten minutes. We got two games of it in tonight, and I'm really keen to play it again soon.

1456: The Bigger...

Jan 13 -- Cocks There are certain types of people in this world for whom the bigger the audience they have, the more of a colossal tool they become.

It happens in all walks of life and all occupations, and conveniently explains the existence of Piers Morgan, though it by no means excuses it.

In my own personal experience, I've encountered this phenomenon in several disparate environments.

Firstly, when I was a teacher, we have "the problem child". Rare is the class that doesn't have at least one of these little horrors; unfortunate is the teacher who has to deal with more than one simultaneously.

The "problem child" is often an interesting case because his or her dickish behaviour is usually a ploy to get attention, whether positive or negative. If this is disruptive to what other people are doing, they don't care. It is consequently easy to assume that this type of child in a classroom simply wants to be a dick and annoy everyone as much as possible, when in fact all they want is everyone to pay attention to them. This is amply proven by the fact that if you get one of these children by themselves to talk about their behaviour, they'll often appear to be completely reasonable and open to your requests. But as soon as there's a class full of other children in front of them, off they go again, and so the whole hideous cycle continues again and again and again.

Secondly, it happens in the workplace. The more power and prominence certain types of individual have, the more dickish they become, flaunting their new-found power over you and pissing everyone else off in the process. Grab them one-on-one and, again, they'll often appear to be reasonable, only to undermine you at the next opportunity when they have an audience.

I suffered the effects of not one but several of these types during a job a few years back. They all seemed to feel like they had something to prove, and I — and several other members of the staff who generally did nothing but keep our heads down and got on with our jobs as best we could — were caught in the firing line as they attempted to prove… whatever it was they were trying to prove.

Thirdly, of course, you have certain people in the media, such as the aforementioned Piers Morgan, but also people who specialise in comedy of various types. Certain comedians deliberately favour the "being a dick" approach to comedy, and it works for them, so fair enough; again, though, take that supportive audience away, and they crumble.

Fourthly, it happens in online games, and this is the reason I bring this up at all this evening thanks to reliable old blog topic Final Fantasy XIV.

Simply put, the more people you're together with at once in an online game, the greater the chance that one or two "alpha" types will try and fight it out to determine who has the biggest e-peen of them all.

Compare and contrast, if you will, the experience of running a 4-player dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV with the 24-player Labyrinth of the Ancients raid added in the most recent patch. I did both this evening: true to form, Labyrinth of the Ancients provided the rest of the group with a few loudmouths who liked nothing more than swearing at one another and passing blame for things that went wrong; conversely, when I ran Pharos Sirius — regarded as probably the hardest four-player dungeon in the game — with a group of three randomly-matched players from the Duty Finder, I had a very pleasant experience in which everyone was helpful, communicated well and was polite to one another.

In this instance, I wonder how much of it is due to the fact that managing communication between 24 people who are supposed to be working together is a lot more challenging than managing communication between just 4 people. Someone has to take the lead when there are that many people milling around, and it just so happens that those with the loudest voices often seem to become the de facto leaders — or at least think they're in charge anyway.

There are exceptions to all of the above, of course; the second time I ran Labyrinth of the Ancients this evening, it was a perfectly smooth run with no disagreements, yelling or willy-waving, for example — and for every "problem child" in a class, there are usually 29 kids who are quite-to-very nice.

It's just a shame that the few dicks out there have to spoil things, isn't it?

1455: LF FLGS

Jan 12 -- FLGS I often see board game enthusiasts talking online about their "Friendly Local Game Store" (FLGS) for short, and I can't help feeling a bit annoyed that for all the stuff Southampton does have, an FLGS is one of the things that is distinctly lacking.

We have a Forbidden Planet, of course, which is a pretty neat geek superstore — though very expensive for things like anime DVDs and the like — and shops like bookseller Waterstones have now started selling board games as well as books. But we're still short of an absolutely dedicated FLGS, and I feel like it's something that's sorely lacking from the city centre — or even one of the areas a little further out, such as studentsville Portswood.

I think back to my time in Toronto and the few visits we had to the board game café Snakes and Lattes and I wonder if such a venture could work in a place like this. I know that Southampton has a reasonably active board gaming scene — enough to support a regular meetup at a pub in the centre that I've not yet had the courage to go along to, for one thing, and I believe my friend Tim also goes to a regular meetup one night a week elsewhere — so is it much of a stretch to wonder if players in the area would respond well to a dedicated space for buying, talking about and possibly even playing board and card games?

I wonder if it's a cultural thing. Near where my brother lives in California, there's an excellent board game shop called Gamescape that has tons of the latest releases in the front, an ample collection of "classics" further back, plus roleplaying sourcebooks, miniatures, supplies and all manner of other things — plus tables with ample space for playing games at the back of the store. There's always plenty of people in there on the few occasions I've been lucky enough to pay it a visit, and I'd imagine it makes a fair amount of money from enthusiasts. So why don't we seem to see more places like that here, in built-up areas like Southampton?

If I knew anything about business, I'd contemplate opening one myself. Unfortunately I don't, so I won't. Which is sort of a shame, really, because I can't help thinking that something like this is the kind of project that needs as much passion as it needs business acumen. And I certainly have one of those two things; it's a pity it doesn't really go hand-in-hand with the other.

Perhaps I should play more games about business. Who fancies a game of, uhh, Power Grid or something?

1454: Disciple of Magic

Jan 11 -- BLM I've now spent a decent amount of time with all three of Final Fantasy XIV's "Disciples of Magic" classes, and it's abundantly and pleasingly clear that all three of them play markedly differently from one another. Which is great! In a game where you can switch your class pretty much whenever you want to, having something to distinguish between all of them is extremely important. And while they all follow the same basic "hotbar and cooldowns" procedure as one another, their application is very different.

Thaumaturgist, which later becomes Black Mage, is the class I've spent the longest with, and I also find it one of the most fun to play. The core of playing this class involves managing your pool of magic points carefully, but not in the same way as mages typically work in RPGs — no, here Black Mages don't have a single stock of magic points and then they're done; by alternating casting ice spells and fire spells, Black Mages have a potentially limitless stock of magic points. Casting ice spells provides you with the "Umbral Ice" buff, which causes your magic points to regenerate quickly but your damage to be less; casting fire spells first cancels out Umbral Ice and then provides you with the "Astral Fire" buff, which increases your damage and the MP cost of your fire spells, but prevents your MP from regenerating altogether. Consequently, your "rotation" — the set of skills you cycle around by default — tends to involve casting Fire spells until you're low on MP, then casting Ice spells to regenerate, maybe throwing in a Thunder spell (which causes damage over time) while those precious MP are coming back.

Conjurer, which later becomes White Mage, meanwhile, is very different. For starters, it's primarily a healing class rather than a damage dealer, though it does have a number of offensive spells that can be surprisingly effective. Unlike Black Mage, White Mage has no means of quickly regenerating magic points, but to make up for this, its spells are a fraction of the cost to cast. This means that playing a White Mage skilfully involves again managing your stock of magic points — but this time around, bearing in mind that you only get one barful of them for a single fight. As a result, you often need to weigh up what your priorities are — can you afford to throw in a few offensive spells to support your damage dealers? Should you use lots of smaller Cure spells or a more powerful, more expensive higher level spell? Getting better at playing White Mage involves quickly understanding the overall party situation — you spend most of your time looking at the party information box in the corner of the screen rather than what's actually happening — and then responding to it appropriately. So far — up to level 30 — it's been reasonably straightforward, but I'm intrigued to see how different it is in the harder dungeons.

Then finally there's Arcanist, which I've just started playing, because I need to level it to 15 in order to turn Conjurer into White Mage. Arcanist is an interesting one because unlike the other classes in their current form, it can branch of in two different directions at high level — the healing-centric Scholar, or the more offensively-oriented Summoner. All have one thing in common, though; the ability to summon various creatures to support them in combat. As well as siccing your pet on enemies, you also have access to both offensive and defensive spells, including healing, buffs and debuffs. It looks like it has potential to be a complicated but rewarding class to play — and again, very distinct from what Black Mage and White Mage offer.

I haven't really done that much with the melee-based Disciple of War classes as yet, but I have little doubt that they'll be a similar way; I spent a bit of time with Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) in the beta test period, and this played a little like Thief/Rogue does in some other games — positioning becomes important, as you do better damage if you're hitting the enemy in the back rather than taking them head-on. I haven't tried Lancer/Dragoon at all yet, but I'm sure it's in my future.

My priorities in the game are kitting out my Black Mage as well as possible — it's the first class I levelled to 50, so it will probably always feel like my "main" — then get White Mage to 50, then experiment with Arcanist some more. I don't know how confident I'll be with high-level healing, but with supportive guildmates who have helped me through a lot of the game so far, I feel confident and safe giving it a go. But there's a way to go before I have to worry about that; 20 whole levels, in fact, and while they should shoot by more quickly than they did for Black Mage — FFXIV's "Armoury Bonus" system, whereby you gain more experience when you're levelling a new class, sees to that — it'll still be a while before endgame White Mage.

Listen to me. I had a feeling I was going to like Final Fantasy XIV when I first considered playing it, but I never thought I'd be as into it as I am. Great job, Square Enix.