Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 08/04/2014

Great show today!

Did Alex turn into an alien at 24:30?

The opening scenes of The Last Of Us still hit incredibly hard, even knowing what happened I still had to walk away for a couple of minutes at the title card.

Yet again, another discussion about the supposed doomed MMO genre (Note: genre isn't what it used to be, and now it's mostly saturated with F2P crap, but there can be success stories) with no mention of the critically acclaimed FF14 and it's financial success while based on a subscription model. Making Square Enix a whole lot more money than what they expected and probably saving them from the self-imposed FF13 apocalypse. First expansion expected to be announced in the next few months while really meaty content patches have been hitting every 3 months since launch..

Where were all the 14 players in the chat? Why were they not shouting that lol Everytime I mention the game during UPF or something, at least one or two people pop up and say they are actively playing and loving it.

Forgot to mention they just released the 30-Day Trial version with a little trailer for it:

And free trial website: Final Fantasy XIV Free Trial

Trailer for the most recent content patch (2.3): Final Fantasy XIV - 2.3 Patch - Defenders of Eorzea

Ads making noise is the worst

FF14 was great from the month I played of it. Hit the level cap with my DRG and had a great time doing so. I was also a big fan of FFXI back in the day which people always forget exists even though a new expansion just came out recently. Also, the game still has a monthly fee and has been running for longer than WoW. I'll definitely jump back into it if/when it goes free to play.

Hey, I worked on that sort of okay X-Files game for PS2. That would be interesting to see Patrick play it.

Yeah, the frequency with which audio laden ads have been showing up in the forums (and even worse during videos) is seriously making me reconsider my decision to white list Giant Bomb.

FF: ARR was one of my favourite games of last year and spent a good 2 months playing it and getting to the end of the main story. Even though I haven't really tackled any of the end game content like the Turning Coils etc, it was the fisrt MMO I played where I reached the level cap. My enjoyment of the game was the journey of getting to level 50 and while there is plenty to do after the main story ends, it involves an incredible deal of grinding and not entirely fussed on that to be honest. I did resubscribe there recently and they have added a bunch of new quests but I kind of feel there is no point to them when all you are getting is gil and not a whole lot of it in the process.

@darro: Yea and that is pretty much the gist of every MMO. I play FF14 on and off. I don't really get involved in any of the more hardcore content such as Binding Coil or Extreme Primals. I enjoy leveling and trying other classes, doing main and side story stuff, the crafting can be fun and just helping out other Free Company members out with whatever they are doing.

For an MMO I feel like the most important thing, at least for me, is how much you like the world and environment. How much you just like being in it. The music is fantastic in the game and it looks great compared to something old and cartoonish like WoW's style (and most MMOs these days). If you enjoy being in the game then you will find stuff to do in it or you can take breaks but it can always pull you back in.

I just don't stress about the gear stuff. As with every MMO, it's all going to get outdated sooner or later. Older stuff will become easier to get. Then people think "Well then what's the point?" The point is that it's fun to be in the game and participate in stuff with people you've made friends with in the game. It's exciting to think about all the known and unknown future content. It's great that I can take a break from the game for 4 months and then come back and those same people are still there and welcome you back etc.

It certainly isn't the best MMO ever made and I don't think there has ever been one. They all have certain aspects or features that others might not have. I've been looking at that ArcheAge F2P MMO thing this past week and have been thinking "Man.. You can buy/build a boat and sail around the ocean like Ultima Online? That water looks amazing.. Why doesn't FF14 have this? ;_; " and then the rest of the game just looks kinda bleh and generic MMO.

Sorry. I don't know why I rambled on about all this. I just get frustrated by Giant Bomb staff's ability to know practically every game known to man, talk about various games that seem to be going against current market trends in whatever way and every. single. time. no one mentions FF14. Arguably the most insane MMO saga that's ever happened with the original 14 release being a colossal failure and wrecking SE's shit and then deciding to put an entirely new team to rebuild an entire MMO from the ground up in like a year and a half or whatever it was, and turning the whole thing around into a great success.

I saw At The Drive In at the Metro in Syndey just before they disbanded. The sound at the venue was terrible but they played pretty much every song off Relationship of Command, so it was fun.

@patrickklepek you probably didn't miss anything by not seeing ATD last year. If their coachella performance is anything to go by, they weren't playing all that well (cedrics vocals, in particular, no longer fit ATD's music).

Patrick is showing his inexperience with MMO's in his discussion of the end game content of Destiny. It is not ok to have your high end content gated to only people you know, that's just lazy game design by a company.

In the early days of Wow it worked because everyone on the server existed in the same zones and there was no phasing. You could find like minded individuals in your capital city by spamming chat looking for group members. This forced people that wanted to experience end game into guilds that were end game focused. This is where you made friends and lasting relationships and is a large part of the appeal for many people.

In 2014 gamers expect and deserve a system that allows you to easily group with people. If someone leaves then the system will replace them with someone else and the raid goes on. Since Destiny is phased and there will not be many people in your zone it is not a true "MMO". Having to use your real life friend list is too restrictive.

@patrickklepek I purchased Relationship of Command for $6.99 at Sam Goody the week it came out based on seeing the "One Armed Scissor" Video. Pretty sure I blew the speakers in my Mom's Dodge Neon the first time I heard Arcarsenal.

Point is, I will forever remember them because they were also my first, "You don't know real music" band.

Nintendo's been making such great strides over the last year, but I won't be convinced they "get it" until they break their region locking (the reason that Nintendo representative was "silenced" on twitter was for showing empathy for that cause). I'm rooting for them, but they've still got a long way to go.

Hey everybody, it's Monnnndaaayyy...

Wait, that's not right.

Surely Nintendo wouldn't invest in an exclusive Fatal Frame for the Japanese Wii U market alone. That things coming international I reckon.

I keep finding it really odd that like, Giant Bomb in general approach Destiny with a super FPS oriented view with minimum MMO views. The raid matchmaking seems like mostly a "for your own good" sorta thing, the idea being that random people won't reliably actually be able to coordinate well enough together. Plus the weird notion of "Everyone has to see absolutely all of the content" that lead to sketchy stuff like the Looking for Raid system from WoW where the content's tuned down to the absolute minimum skill level and to boredom.

@elwoodan:

Yes, pretty amazing how Naughty Dog manages to hit you right in the feels in the first 30 minutes of the game. I still think it's the best opening of a game we've seen so far.

It's way more important that everyone can see all of the content. Looking for Raid was a total wonder since I will more than likely never have the time to commit to the more traditional Raids but now I don't have to totally miss out on key parts of the game I'm playing.

I'd add that if Nintendo got on board with a subscription service (say, a cross-platform Virtual Console subscription...they have the infrastructure for it now) they'd definitely feel modern, and it would give people a reason to pick up a 3DS and a Wii U.

GW2 does it best. You have a party finder, instead of a dungeon finder, that puts you into a party with people who want to run a specific dungeon or path. After that you still have to communicate, so it's not just auto-matching you like the WoW dungeon finder, which means no one really talks to eachother and you just rush thru it.

All praise to @Vinny Caravella!

@ahgunsillyo: well.. its tuesday now?

please do a souls stream!

At The Drive-In was just a footnote in the history of The Mars Volta to me. And now, apparently they're Antemasque.

Sparta? Haha. Yeah.

Naughty Dog makes great multiplayer...and then they add lame microtransactions on top of it that undermines progression and makes me lose some respect for the whole thing.

I really hope they don't have that stuff in Uncharted 4.

Agree with what a couple others were saying. Patrick was totally right in his gut assumption that locking content to six people that HAVE to be on your friends list or w/e is dumb. WoW has been ACTIVELY moving away from having a SET number of people for raiding. It used to be really harshly tuned for specific numbers (10 or 25) and is now moving in a much better, more accessible direction of letting groups have a flexible number of players. For each additional player you add, the boss scales in difficulty. It doesn't matter if it's only for the "hardcore" players at all. Unless you are on the previous gen version of the game, are there REALLY that many people that have at least 6 friends, with the same current gen (PS4 / Xbone) console, with the game, at max level, all online at the same time?! That is NOT going to be a typical scenario at least not in the first good while of this game's life. It's hard enough to get a group of players together in WoW, a game with a really strong social element. How many people go out of their way to make friends with people in console games? I typically avoiding any sort of communication with non friends as if it's the plague. That headset stays as far from my head as possible. Maybe I'm just an anti social ass, but I'm not really a fan of being called names by 10 year olds. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

The fact that Destiny is going with this archaic model from old WoW is sort of surprising (or maybe not, Luke Smith was huge into WoW back in the 1up days, wouldn't be surprised if that had some role in Bungie's design choices). WoW usually adapts and takes the best parts of other games to improve and make players happy. Destiny seems to be taking some of the most outdated, boring, frustrating aspects of old WoW and trying to pass them off as compelling content. We will have to see how it lands when the game comes out, but there are some serious red flags up from the GB crew, and I myself have to admit I'm getting skeptical despite really liking Halo, Bungie, MMOs, etc.

Agreed. Then you have to account for only high level players in your friends list if there is no matchmaking. Friends at different levels would mean a weirdly scaled boss, right? Haven't played many MMOs but don't know if that is accounted for.

Cannot fucking believe that @patrickklepek is an At the Drive-In fan. Them and then The Mars Volta have been my favorite bands since 7th grade. I guess it was around 98 or 99 when I got into them and still love'em. Omar actually started a band just recently called Bosnian Rainbows and they had a song on True Detective.

I was under the impression that I'm the only person in existence that knows that those bands exist but I guess maybe it's just the state I live in.

Not sure I get it. Destiny has matchmaking for the Strikes. Everything else you can do solo or in a fireteam if you want to.

That's how it was in the Alpha anyway. I'm assuming that's still the same.

I agree that the Destiny missions feel too much like MMO stuff, but I probably still enjoy the hell out of it. It's just a very well made game. I almost never mind doing fetch quests in those because they play well.

How do both hosts, who write about video games for a living, know so very little about a huge genre (MMOs)?

This show is making me cringe lately, I hope you guys start talking about games you actually play some time soon.