Four years ago, I decided to embark on my first Extra Life campaign. This was well before I discovered that milestones that have me to do/consume terrible things would become as big a staple as video games are to my fundraising.
So, back in November 2014, I fired up Final Fantasy XIV to begin my first Extra Life stream. In just one week, June 28th to be specific, I will kick off this year’s campaign with FFXIV’s latest expansion, Shadowbringers.
This time around, I figured some background would help as, to quote one of the folks that watched me play FFXIV in my first campaign, “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m intrigued”. After all, unlike most games, this is a MMO, meaning the whole premise is based on playing with other real people. It’s not exactly a linear experience which can make for a very confusing viewing experience.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to even attempt to explain the lore and story of how we got from version 1.0 to version 5.0 that will release next Friday. Instead, I’m going to detail the incentives to both donate and watch the streams that will kick off next week. I can happily talk about the lore during the stream, but you want to know how to force me to donate out of my own pocket what to cheer for.
The Death Tax
Last year, because I knew Mass Effect fairly well, I pledged $5 per death. With a new expansion, I’m going to have no clue what’s coming and neither will the other players. Plus, my main job in the game is to literally be the person that gets hit all the damn time– in short, I should be the one dying first.
With that in mind, my in-game death tax will be reduced to $1; however, if the entire party dies (known as a wipe), the penalty will remain $5.
In short, in these games you learn by failure. The deaths will be frequent; however, there are always was to make them more frequent…
Donation Incentives
| Amount | Action |
|---|---|
| $10 | Intentionally hit a party member with a boss mechanic/attack. Time and target chosen by me. |
| $20 | Ban an ability, chosen at random. Can stack. One stack removed from all bans upon death. |
| $37 | Intentionally kill a party member, chosen at random. Failure to kill in a single dungeon run/instance is a $5 penalty to me. |
| $50 | As Tank: Drop tank stance As Healer: Stop healing one party member, chosen at random As Damage Dealer (DPS): Dance in place and stop moving/attacking. Each of the above will last for a single fight/pull. |
Let’s go over each of these so you have a better idea of how to make me dead your donations are going to work.
- $10 – Every boss has multiple kinds of mechanics and attacks. About 90% of the time, if you are doing things right you are either avoiding them or making sure your party doesn’t get hit by them. So this will make me do things very wrong and hit a party member with something that could kill them.
- $20 – Ah, the ever popular one. In FFXIV there are a group of abilities called “cooldowns” that can help enhance damage or protect you from dying. This will ban one of those abilities. For example, in my main role as a tank, I have a set of abilities I rotate through to survive certain attacks…not having these can be bad, bad news.
- $37 – We #RememberTheSix (or at least Notre Dame fans will) by intentionally killing a party member. I am going to try to group up in two ways: with CPU members known as “trusts”, or with my friends that I play with. Yes, some of them willingly signed up for this. There’s a lot of ways to cause death, but if somehow my target makes it out alive, it’s $5 out of my pocket.
- $50 – So each of these outcomes are flat out party-crippling. By dropping a tank stance, I’m disabling a very basic ability to build enmity, which keeps enemies hitting me and not everyone else. Chaos will ensue. Flat out not healing someone should be self explanatory, and if this happens to be a tank, it’s gonna be real bad time. And the dancing in place (more hilarious because I’ll likely be playing a Dancer for the DPS role) just means I’m a waste of space. I’m also opening myself to getting hit by, well, everything.
Now, there may be times when I’m grouped with random people that have no clue what I’m doing. I’m going to spare those poor souls and let the incentives carry over until I have a chance to unleash the pain on people I actually know/agreed to all this. So keep that in mind!
Schedule
I actually took time off for a solid week of streaming. The fun will kick off on June 28 at 4 AM (CT)–yes, that’s not a typo, that’s when the servers are scheduled to go live. Further, to celebrate in the spirit of Extra Life gaming marathons, June 28 will be XIV hours of FFXIV.
Want me to go longer? (That’s what she said!) Every $100 donated until the end of the marathon will add 15 minutes to the clock. If you’re doing the math at home, that’s 90 seconds for every $10 or 9 seconds per dollar. I’ll be sure to play every last second, and, yes, I’m counting donations already received as well.
The longer you keep me up, the slower my reactions, the more chance for mistakes, meaning more deaths and wipes, meaning more money for the kids!
As I mentioned, the marathon will not be the only stream. Be sure to check out streams throughout the weekend and following week! The full schedule is embedded below. Each stream will be a minimum of three hours long.