Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #33

Hello readers, welcome to the 33rd development log!

Development of our studio is coming along very nicely. In the past few months, one of our team artists, Deborah, has doubled as our new social media administrator. She has been keeping our Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr pages up to date with all new information about the game. Be sure to say hi! Like and follow our whimindie pages and show your support!

Also debuting this upcoming month is our new enhanced studio logo! Designed by Geno Quesada, it contains the lettering of our old logo, with our new blue ring design around it!

We will also be making our second appearance as a company to the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2015 from June 16-18. Some of us will be wearing t-shirts with our logo on them. Be sure to say hi!

Selatria

Chapter 2 now available for Indiegogo backers!

First and foremost, at the time of this posting, we also have a playable section of Chapters 1 and 2 available for play for Indiegogo backers. During the summer, we will have a test period available. If you supported us in the Indiegogo campaign, please check your email and download the game and give it a try! Thanks to your support, we were able to make the game fun and challenging up to this point! 

New character art: 

Check out some of the new characters that will be featured in Chapter 3! Art by Deborah Groves -

New in-development screenshots: 
 
Below are some of the new screenshots in development of the game. Terrain Art and Spike Shield monster designed by Jennifer Gilliland, and the Wisp/Ghost monsters presented were designed by Deborah Groves! Also pictured below is the new toggle tooltip developed by Leigh-anna Griswould!

New music!

Take a listen to a sample of one of the new themes in development for Chapter 3! The Uncharted Waters theme composed by Christopher Nuño. This track will play if you wander too far off the edge of the Overworld on Ship and you're "out of range", so to say.

Tumblr Page now available!

As mentioned in the preface, we now have a Tumblr page available, managed by our team artist, Deborah Groves! She is posting new information about the game every day, and we will use that platform to show off new videos, images, and character profiles as development of the game progresses! In fact, when the Selatria tumblr gets 30 followers, perhaps we will have a new reveal for you?

Story and Auditions:

Ryan Homme and I are currently writing the last section of Selatria’s story to bring the game to a grand conclusion. We’ve casted a lot of new people to roles in preparation to send them lines for the game, and new auditions for roles will be springing up in the coming days.

As of this development log, however, we’ve temporarily closed auditions while we go through all of the ones that were sent in the past couple of weeks. New roles that will be posted in the future will include the main role of Hat, the minor role of Mage's mother, and supporting roles of other chapters that aren't quite ready to reveal at this point! I am coming up with new audition lines for these, and they will be posted after we go through the lines from the last round.

If you would like to audition for a voiced role in Selatria, book mark our auditions page at http://www.whimindie.com/auditions and feel free to contact us!

Upcoming Changes to the Battle System:

We have some changes we're going to be implementing for Selatria's battle system in the near future.

We have plans in mind to have Melanie be able to be two-handed Greatswords as part of her equipment. Greatswords will allow for Melanie to be a hard-hitting damage dealer, but at the expense of large defense and speed, as well as not being able to equip a shield.

We are going to be making a lot of changes to Paramedic class for Mage as well, in future versions, we are going to add a healing potency to every single one of Paramedic spells, combine all of the status purification spells for Paramedic into one solid “Purify” that covers healing every status effect, and change “Negate” to cancel out boosts to enemy stats.

Mage's Elementalist forme will feature an increase to spell potency so Elementalist spells will do a greater amount of damage.

For expansions on the Team Attack Battle System (TABS), we will be introducing new characters in Chapter 2 and on that are hybrid characters. Characters that can chain off others as well as execute trigger attacks of their own. We will expand more on this in a future development log!

Game Design:

As for the current game design, we’re currently developing the end of Chapter 3 going onto Chapter 4. Each Chapter of Selatria will have a different gameplay focus, as Chapter 2 will have dungeons with a focus on puzzle solving, Chapter 3 will be more mini-game focused.

ANTics

Development of the PC version and iOS client are underway! They will be coming out this Summer! We will have a new video that will accompany those releases, and we’re currently looking for a home to be able to release the PC client! More information about ANTics will be coming in future development logs!


That's it for now. Until next time!



.

Bahamut! I am coming for you!

With the help of Azu La and team, I was able to complete Turn 12 last night.

Next step, the finale of Final Coil. I'm coming for you, Bahamut!

Friendly or Flirtatious?

What's the difference between being friendly and being flirtatious? I seem to have them backwards when it comes to people I don't know too well. In most instances, I'll play it safe and assume every one is friendly unless they outwardly say otherwise or the hints, at least what I perceive, is something more.

I've seen far too many stories of people who are labeled as creepy because they mistakenly thought wrong on the flirtatious concept, or thinking someone was flirting the whole time. Being rejected is fine, but is it worth gambling your reputation to have that "creepy" label? I don't think it is.

To some, being just friends is seen as an insult or hurtful. Maybe it is because they don't want something more, maybe it's a hit to the ego,  I don't really know the answer. I think having someone as a friend, or someone considering to be your friend is an honor that they're willing to sacrifice their time and energy to be in your presence. You matter to them and vice-versa (in varying capacities).

Anyhow, just felt like typing out what was on my mind.

Regarding self-deprecating nature

I feel like it's time to get something off of my chest.

I put somewhat of a persona on in the real world and on my Facebook interactions. In the real world, I put myself out there as being very self-deprecating and make a lot of jokes at my own expense, partially to make myself appear to be personable. As someone who can easily be approached.

Because of the self-deprecating nature of how I act, I am mistakenly seen as someone who is not very intelligent. I can see where people can draw these conclusions, and it's why I prefer to be a recluse most of the time.

I would say how I act in these blog posts and how I present myself here gives a more accurate representation of how I perceive myself and how I truly am. I'm not really sure where I was going on this subject, and kind of started to ramble. I just wanted to put this out there, because that was on my mind.


Anyhow, some not-so-legitimate links on the meaning of these things can be found below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deprecation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

Grover Eyeveen's FFXIV Adventures - May 2015

(Warning: Spoilers are contained below in the "Final Coil" sub-section!)

It's been a little while since I got to talk a little about my adventures in Final Fantasy XIV. Come this September I will have been in Eorzea for five years. Time really flew on the adventure.

Though I really don't have a lot of play time as much as I used to in my XI days or even in the 1.0 era, I'm still working on my achievements. I play FFXIV as a whole as an Achievement Hunter, which gives me the desire to want to experience everything in the game, even if only once, so I can get as many clears and achievements as possible.

I recently hit my original Heavensward goals of getting a Paladin Zeta Weapon and finishing the Zodiac Weapon questline as well as obtaining 5000 achievement points! Top-tier player I would be considered based on the ranking, but I still consider myself a mid-core player at best.

Paladin Zeta!

I've also gotten far better at Triple Triad and Chocobo racing, and I have working on those as secondary to my progress in the Final Coil of Bahamut. I also got my personal chocobo some cool looking Dragoon barding in preparation of the upcoming expansion!

My chocobo "Wonder" and the Dragoon Barding

But perhaps the biggest piece of recent news as I'm shifting my own free company and goals to match my personal playstyle and preferences going forward.

The Future of Viva Eorzea:

Viva Eorzea - Taken January 2015

In the past few months or so, Viva's been on the downward trend. A lot of friends have left the free company because it's not what it used to be, the player mentality not only in our free company, but as a whole as shifted. I wouldn't say it's worse than what it used to be, but it's certainly different. I want to say that the downward trend started around the release of the game Destiny, but it could have been earlier or later than that, at least that's when I noticed said changes. A lot of the regulars went into hiatus and stopped playing. Scheduled event attendance went into all time lows with frequent event cancellations, and the Coil Statics formed for the regulars had to be cancelled/disbanded due to waning attendance and an all around drop in participation. Our Ventrilo used to be full of members and dropped down to mostly myself and Elieris with Sutaki popping in here and there.

After a few months of this, and a lot of talking Elieris and Sutaki, we decided that a change was necessary if we wanted to keep Viva running for the future. From 2010 until now, I was creating events with the lowest common demoninator in mind. (I don't mean this in a derogatory tone). Events were originally designed to help the members furthest behind to catch up to current membership so we would constantly have participation from those willing to backtrack and people who need wins. Due to the bonus soldiery offered to first time winners and drops from these encounters that were still useful, we would have a full house most nights.

Due to the rapid power creep introduced every two patches and echo being added to current endgame content, tomes were increasingly seen as an obsolete method as a bonus incentive to keep people willing to help, and rare drops like ponies or others aren't a good enough factor to keep people reeling in the content. Mix that with the downward trend in attendance, and events were more or less a ghost house.

For the reason above, I made the announcement a few days back that Viva Eorzea was going to have a format-flip of sorts come June, shifting what used to be a mid-core do everything Free Company, to a progression-based Free Company. While current members from Viva will be grandfathered into the new paradigm, those coming back from a break or hiatus will need to catch up to relatively current content on their own or ask on non-event hours. There will also be an expectation to fill out their character information on a Progression sheet and have voice chat available for attending events.

My open letter to Viva members

This change will personally allow me to enjoy FFXIV way more, reduce overall stress on attempting to keep everyone on a same page, and redefines the goals and expectations of Viva members, and allows us to focus on events on the current members who regularly attend events to be able to progress further every week come Heavensward to be able to see all new content at a reasonable pace.


New Expansion!

Heavensward is releasing in June, can't wait to finally see Ishgard and fly in the sky. I won't be changing my race, but I hope to explore Alexander, Floating Continent, and playing around with the new jobs!

My benchmark results on my laptop which I call "Cosmo".

XIV Heavensward Benchmark - Grover Eyeveen (Hyperion)
Directx11 Benchmark Results - So beautiful :)
Posted by Grover Wimberly IV on Monday, April 27, 2015

The Final Coil of Bahamut:

After having trouble getting assistance working through Final Coil of Bahamut, I've found a group that is working on learning and progressing through the turns, so I can get a chance to learn it. I don't like being carried through the content and like earning the clear. I found a group of players called the Friendly Coil of Bahamut, and invited Elieris to join with me. When I feel like I've learned enough of the encounter to hold my own, I ask my real life friend Azu who also plays (and has extensively cleared Coil) to help out with the final leg or whatever phase I was having trouble with in progression. Though I'm not a world first player by any means, I'm grateful to have a group to practice with that I can go with at a more casual pace and still be able to complete the content.

Adventures in Turn 10

With the assistance of Friendly Coil of Bahamut linkshell, I was able to learn the phases of Turn 10. With Azu and his static's assistance I was able to complete Turn 10 and 11. And now I'm working on Turn 12.

Turn 12 Adventures

Currently I've progressed to getting Phoenix to just about the start of Phase 3.

The very first time I entered the turn, before practicing with the group, my tank friend Elieris and I queued up in duty finder hoping (at least in my case) to learn the fight without being judged by people who know me. After watching the 5-7 minute cutscene, I was grouped up with some very nasty rude players who were Duty Findering expecitng a farm run. Bad idea, and a catch-22 of sorts. How is one expected to ever learn an encounter if they've never seen it before?

That's why I'm all for having a "Practice/Watch Cutscenes/Never Cleared" option for the Duty Finder. I would like to be able to practice with like minded players without being chewed a new one.

Other than that, my Final Coil experience has been a lot more easygoing and fun than the Binding and Second Coil runs. While I do appreciate the people I've ran with in past static parties, and they are certainly very skilled players with good playing chemistry, there was underlying tension between certain people which caused a fallout from the others. A few friendships were lost along the way, too.

It may also be the case that Turns 10 and 11 are just outright easier and more forgivable then Turns 6 and 7 were in the same progression. 6 and 7 our group was stuck on for a very long while and it took a lot of time to get anywhere and wore down the group and morale as a whole. 

Though I don't have any current realistic goals of beating turn 13 in time for Heavensward, I would at least give it an honest effort and then get help with it at the very least after the hype for the expansion dies down a little bit.




I think that covers my current adventures in Eorzea for now. Until next time!



.