Progress Made In A Dying Game

Good morning everybody,

It's so nice when my day gig has me on an assignment that actually matches what I say when 'we're doing research on current events and issues'... it makes things so much more fun!

Anyway, the first half of last night's stream featured Jump Force, with a big focus on Online matches, as we got our first ranked win. Plus we tackled a few other achievements as well, and I'm surprised still at how few people have managed to accomplish things that a very basic within the game. It is a testament to just how poorly received Jump Force was, despite it being a damn big seller in 2019.

In terms of my direct head to head, player vs player experience with Jump Force... well, there were no disconnects, and outside of a couple of matches where there were actual pauses in the action, every match ran pretty smoothly. I am surprised at how reluctant people are for rematches, particularly when they beat me! 

That said, I figure the two toughest online achievements for me to get are the one where I have to challenge 10 or more players, and have them accept the challenge, as well as win a 'Friendly' match... which seems to have fewer people playing that particular mode. The other two achievements that require direct head to head play just need to play 30 and 100 matches, so I can gradually knock that out.

Gears of War 4 returned, as I was joined by Iceman and we tackled all of Act III, which damn near took three hours. With it having six chapters, and having the most collectable within the game, its understandable as to why the Act which is directly in the middle of a five act story be the longest. Now if I remember correctly, Acts IV an V weren't all that long, but we'll see how that goes if there's a chance we can finish Gears of War 4 in the second half of next Wednesday's stream!

Following the stream we raided Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal! Safe to say Kal is super excited about Endwalker!  

Jump Force Achievements

1. The Battle Begins: Won ranked match one or more times
2. Support Skill Master: Obtained 50 or more Support Skills
3. Bonds of Friendship: Reached over 500 SP for acquiring Support Skills
4. The Fruits of Friendship: Reached over 1000 SP for acquiring Support Skills
5. You Fight for your Friends: Used 10 or more One-Use Items

Gears of War 4 Achievements

1. Pounsus Interruptus: Killed a Pouncer mid-pounce with Shotgun or Chainsaw 
2. But You Can't Pick Your Family: Found 5 weapons in snot bubbles 

Twitch Clip Links

• First Online Ranked Win!
• Victory is Mine! 
• We Drop The Bomb!
• They are all over the place! 
• Flex Kait! FLEX!
• Pounsus Interruptus 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout session featured Uppercut Combo #2, Body Uppercut Combo and Body Hook Combo for a duration of 28 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 438 kcal.

Figured out how to get audio to route from the Elgato HD60S  to the Yeti X, which hopefully will result in a stoppage of the audio desyncing.

Endwalker for Final Fantasy XIV is upon us... even though I'm not going to reach that content for probably at least a month, as I still have to get through Shadowbringers. If there is one thing about Final Fantasy XIV that surprises me is the lack of standard maintenance... I mean with Star Trek Online, down time for maintenance is basically expected once a week, and even then they don't fix everything. So I assume instead of doing patch up jobs here and there the folks behind Final Fantasy XIV actually do some quality testing of major fixes whenever they roll out a massive expansions. That said, my streak of playing Final Fantasy XIV will end today since the game is down for 24 hours due to the Endwalker Expansion and update, so hey I got in a lot of play time before 'down time' even became a factor! Which is pretty cool... and something the folks over at Star Trek Online should consider!  

That said I knocked out the majority of the 4.5 content tonight, granted it was mostly watching cut-scenes and such to set up basically one more dungeon before setting in the final pieces for Shadowbringers... in which all of the Scions are basically being put into a coma of some sort. Looking forward to when the game comes back up to resume the story and such. But of course I could have finished the Stormblood content if I didn't get distracted with every side story in the game!

For tonight's stream I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'm going to feature, we might do a variety night of different games, or actually go back and put forward some effort to towards the extra content of games we've already featured this year. We shall see...

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!