Games Happy

Whereas this yr’s Last Fantasy XIV FanFest has been host to a variety of actions for attendees to have interaction themselves with, by far the preferred has been the returning Battle Problem – a chance for gamers to check their mettle in opposition to an upcoming battle. Throughout this yr’s present, gamers had the chance to face Asura – a Trial that’s set to be launched with subsequent yr’s Last Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail enlargement. Sitting down with buddy and former contributor of the location Kazuma Hashimoto and a variety of different Warriors of Mild (together with Thallan Gildeford, King Ma, Ishtar Valentine, Worstluck NA, and Kini Solis) we steeled ourselves for what would usually not pose a lot of a problem for our group of battle-hardened veterans – establishing our hotbars on the fly, and trying a struggle that no one else locally has had any prior expertise with.

Maybe extra fascinating than the struggle itself was watching our group scramble to organize for the encounter – personally, I had smuggled my Logitech G600 mouse on with my individual, and the very first thing I did was promptly swap out the supplied mouse with my very own. Each character on the setup had gearsets for each fight Job within the recreation able to go, so it was solely left to us to rearrange our hotbars and keybindings to accommodate how we wished to try the struggle; all inside a fairly small time restrict, after all. Even accounting for the truth that everybody in our group had pre-registered for the problem forward of time, there was nonetheless loads of ready in line earlier than we may very well be seated at a pc.

The opposite consideration is that Asura will not be correctly carried out into the sport till subsequent yr. The model of the encounter that we confronted was one specifically tuned for the Fanfest, and naturally there can and might be any variety of steadiness and job changes for each one in all our jobs come the total launch. 

As for the struggle itself – the person gimmick of Asura is an assault coming from outdoors the world. A large effigy will mime an AOE with their posture – and between that and the forged bar gamers must each decide the place an assault will land and shortly get themselves into place earlier than it lands. You will not see the precise AOE markers seem till it’s too late to react with out having been heading in the right direction to avoiding the injury within the first place. Alongside with the usual raidwides, tankbusters and a short mechanic the place line AOEs would spawn in a clockwise rotation, that was the mechanics that we noticed for Asura. 

Past the truth that the struggle, after all, is not full but –  and contemplating the gamers we partied up with, it is unattainable to know if maybe we missed any mechanics on account of burning Asura down too shortly – it is shaping as much as be a strong addition to the sport’s present roster. We’ll have to attend and see if the remainder of Last Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail can handle to ship, however it’s nonetheless a comforting, if not unsurprising, notice to start out the anticipate Dawntrail.