Platinum on Final Fantasy XV

After 80 hours of playing and almost 7 months, I finally got the platinum trophy on Final Fantasy XV.

I enjoyed FFXV enough that getting the platinum trophy was extremely likely, if not inevitable. Most PS4 games that I start playing, I at least look over the trophy list. If they all seem reasonably easy, I’ll go for platinum. Just a few hours into FFXV, I noticed that the platinum shouldn’t be too hard, and it honestly wasn’t. A little time consuming, sure, but not painfully difficult.

The main campaign took me right at 50 hours, at which point I’d already hit most of the highlights. All I had left was to gather the rest of the royal arms, grind out the remaining character skills, and kill the Adamantoise, mostly. Collectively, a bit, but individually, none of them were very taxing.

Getting Noctis’s fishing skill to level 10 was probably the most frustrating. Fishing, as a mechanic, is fairly well implemented in FFXV. It’s just not something I care to do, especially as much as I had to do to max out the skill. I bought the best gear, did the fishing quests for the gear and xp, and did everything I could to speed up the process. Even still, I’m fairly certain it took me a few weeks to finally finish with it.

Killing Adamantoise, what many people consider one of the most frustrating trophies, was certainly annoying. Not hard at all, every single attack is telegraphed and easy to dodge. Just really, really, really, really long. It took me something in the ballpark of 3 hours, across a few days. Supposedly, there are faster ways to finish the fight. I don’t care, I beat it and grabbed that trophy as my second to last remaining. All I had to do after that was camp about 10 times in a row to get Ignis’s cooking skill from 9 to 10.

Looking back, that’s the first platinum trophy I’ve received in almost exactly a year. The last one I got was Ratchet & Clank (2016) back in September 2016. As I’ve discussed several times before, I really just don’t have the time to go for every platinum I see anymore. On top of a full time job, a freelance job, and a family, I now also have school to worry about. Video games just aren’t a high priority, so I have to be selective with what I play.

I may start writing posts for every platinum trophy I get now. They’re certainly rare enough that I won’t be bombarding my blog with platinum announcements. Just could be a neat way of noting, hey, I actually enjoyed this game enough to play it to 100% completion (or whatever is required for platinum).

Digital Receipts via Email

Some merchants allow customers to receive digital receipts via email. Why can’t everyone?

The Benefits of Digital Receipts

Toys R Us is a surprisingly tech-savvy store chain. They allow NFC tap and pay, and you can even have receipts sent to your inbox instead of getting a paper copy. For me, this is amazing. First and foremost, it gives me something that I’m far less likely to lose. If I get a paper receipt, I usually just throw it in the bag with my merchandise. For items that I may need to return, I’ll put the receipt in my wallet. Either way, it usually gets lost or thrown away within a day or two. By opting for an email, I have a semi-permanent record of my purchase that I can’t exactly lose, and I can even search my email for later. Unless I delete the email, which I rarely delete emails, I have records of basically any purchase I’ve made at Toys R Us within the past few years.

In addition to giving me a digital record of my purchase that I can easily find later, email receipts are more private and secure. While there isn’t much valuable information on a receipt, keeping them exclusively in my inbox means nobody can access any of the information except for me. Where I might leave a paper receipt on the dash of my vehicle or drop it in the parking lot, an email receipt is kept behind my login credentials in a place that only I will see.

As an environmental benefit, digital receipts reduce the amount of paper used for a transaction. No, a single receipt isn’t going to make a huge difference. However, if larger stores like Toys R Us were to eventually migrate all receipts to digital, I’m certain it would have a fairly large impact on environmental conservation. If other chain stores follow suit, it could add up to a potentially huge reduction of paper, and thus fewer trees chopped down for paper. Not to mention, the merchants themselves would save money on the cost of paper.

The Problem with Digital Receipts

So, how does Toys R Us know that I want an emailed receipt? I have a Toys R Us account, and my preferences indicate that I want a digital receipt, and where I want it sent. When I get to the register at Toys R Us, I give them my phone number to look up my account, and then they know what to do.

Not all merchants allow digital receipts. In fact, I would say that more probably don’t than do. Even if more merchants did offer digital receipts, I need an account with each store to have my email and preferences indicated. The alternative would be to physically input my email address for every single transaction, everywhere I go. That’s not going to happen, especially with a line of impatient people behind me.

Even if I could open an account with every store that I regularly shop at, do I necessarily want them to have my email address? Toys R Us is bad about sending deals and junk email, but I can fortunately turn that off. What about stores that make spam emails harder to opt out of? Even worse, what about merchants that might sell my contact information to advertisers? I don’t want an inbox full of advertising just to get receipts by email rather than paper.

The Solution for Digital Receipts

While it doesn’t cover all of the logistics around implementation, I do have an idea for a solution to get digital receipts at every store: handle it at the credit card level. While many consumers do still use cash, I would wager that the majority of transactions in the United States are probably paid with credit or debit cards. If every major credit card company would allow users to receive receipts in their inbox, rolling this functionality out to each individual merchant would probably be feasible.

Most credit card users likely have an online account with their company to pay their bill online or check statements. With this account, users could indicate a receipt email, possibly not even the same email that the account uses. Additionally, users could select a preference for digital receipts, paper receipts, or both. This central hub would mean that anywhere I use my credit card, merchants would automatically know what I want.

Since there are only a few credit card companies in the United States, it shouldn’t be difficult to implement a standard and universal system. I say that, but xkcd has a good example of how standards in technology normally go. In any case, if there were a single standard, only a few companies would have to adopt it.

How would this take place? The customer goes to a merchant, be it retail, restaurant, professional services, or anything else. Merchant opens up a transaction for the customer to pay. Customer swipes or inserts credit card, exactly as things work now. When the merchant bills the transaction to the credit card company, they would send payment as well as the customer’s receipt preferences. At this point, the transaction is paid like normal, and the merchant’s point-of-sale system would know whether to print or email a receipt to the customer.

An added benefit of this system is that the user’s email address can be decoupled from the transaction. The merchant can send the digital receipt to the credit card company, linked only to my credit card number. The credit card company could then send my receipt to the email on file. This gives added security, since the merchant never sees my personal information. Merchants can’t send spam emails, or sell customer data to other advertisers.

If this caught on with most merchants and credit card companies, receipts for any credit card transactions would be available in a single place. Any sort of tax deductions, reimbursements, or anything involving receipts would be far easier. Instead of filing receipts away for every purchase you make, your credit card company and email service do it for you.

Yet another benefit would be fraud notice. If every merchant sends digital receipts, then an unexpected purchase email would be a clear indicator of credit card fraud. Instead of looking over statements each month, users would immediately know when a thief used their credit card. Inevitably, this would reduce the time and hassle around reporting a stolen credit card, or the risk of not noticing the stolen card.

Obviously, this would require work from several different parties. Merchants and credit card companies alike would need to agree on a standard and work on developing the hardware and software to accompany it. However, I feel like the benefits significantly outweigh the costs. While I don’t know of a way that I could personally help bring this into practice, I definitely want it to become a reality. Paper receipts are an old practice, and I genuinely believe digital receipts are the all-around superior option.

Shot Glass Collection

For quite a few years, I have collected shot glasses. Some people collect snow globes, some collect baseball cards, I collect shot glasses.

How did I get started collecting shot glasses? Honestly, I can’t really remember. I probably picked up one from some tourist destination because it looked cool, rinse and repeat a few times, suddenly I’ve got a good many of them and it’s just become my “thing.” I’ve been collecting them at least since middle school, as I have a few from my 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C.

Collecting shot glasses has its perks. For one, it makes souvenirs super easy. If someone tells me they’re going on a trip and want to bring me something back, I always ask for a shot glass. No need to shop around and find something they think I’ll like. If they pick up a shot glass, we can both know for certain that I’ll like it. Plus, they’re typically cheaper than other souvenir items like shirts and towels.

One facet of my collection that is missing, however, is some sort of catalog system. I have a lot of shot glasses, probably upwards of 50 at this point. It’s very easy to forget what places I have a shot glass from, or what styles I have if I want to get a different one from the same place. Obviously, I don’t take my collection with me everywhere I go, and I don’t really look at my collection enough to know what I do and don’t have. It would be nice to have some sort of software or database with all of my shot glasses listed and described.

What would I want in this sort of system? An image of the shot glass, or maybe a 3D scan if I’m feeling fancy, would be nice to see them at a glance. Going forward, it would be nice to record the date of acquisition, to know which I’ve had for the longest. Location would be nice, so I could filter by where I do and don’t have shot glasses from. If it was a gift from someone else and not one I purchased for myself, I would like to record who gave it to me. Finally, I would want a details or notes field for any text-based information.

With all this information, I would want multiple ways to look through my collection. The most practical would be searching by location, seeing all the shot glasses I’ve obtained from a place, or whether I have any from there at all. Additionally, I would want just a visual interface that I would look through and show off my collection to other people. Sure, I can show them off at home, but what if someone asks me about it when I’m away from home?

There would certainly be some growing pains to apply this sort of system to an already existing collection, but I feel like the benefits would outweigh the hassle. I don’t plan on stopping my collection any time soon, so it will gradually become more and more overwhelming to keep track of. Before it gets any more unwieldy, it would be nice to get everything in order to have a tidy list of the shot glasses that I have.

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Pokemon Battle Tower Doubles

I grew up playing Pokemon. Starting with Pokemon Blue Version in gen 1, I’ve played a Pokemon game from almost every generation released to date. However, the most fun I’ve had in any Pokemon game was doing cooperative double battles in the Battle Tower of Pokemon HeartGold.

HeartGold came out when I was a freshman in college, and I preordered it to pick up on release day. Generation 2 was always my favorite, with two full regions and a lot of my favorite Pokemon. Obviously, I was super excited for a remake of that generation. I played through the game like normal, finished all 16 gyms, beat the Elite Four, and took down Red at the top of Mt. Silver. I figured after that, I was done.

My roommate at the time got SoulSilver, and he taught me about Effort Values, Inherited Values, and the Battle Tower. The main story of Pokemon was only the beginning. The real game starts once you can access the Battle Tower and breed up some powerful Pokemon. I felt like such a noob, but it was fantastic to be able to bring new life to a Pokemon game.

The first Pokemon that I bred to get a Battle Tower entrant was Scyther. Not necessarily an amazing option for competitive play, Scyther is my personal favorite Pokemon and it can hold its own in a lot of situations. Once I had the skills and move set that I wanted, I started playing through singles in the Battle Tower to test my mettle.

After I figured out how the Battle Tower worked and got a few wins under my belt, my roommate suggested that we do double battles. As the name implies, a double battle pits 2 on 2, as opposed to the traditional 1 on 1 of older Pokemon games. Players can use 2 of their own Pokemon and control both, or they can work together with each player controlling only 1 of their Pokemon and coordinating attacks with each other.

As much as single player Pokemon requires skill, it has nothing on the nuance and complexity of double battles. Fighting with 2 Pokemon opens up the opportunity to combo moves, but also forces you to consider the effect that moves will have on your allies. Many moves affect all combatants, and thus can do damage to your opponents as well as Pokemon on your side. Some of the best team combinations take advantage of these mechanics in clever and interesting ways. Initially, I didn’t pay any mind to what Pokemon would work well together, we just went in with the Pokemon that we liked. What we started with, however, turned out to be an amazing combination that we stuck with for nearly the entire time we played doubles together.

I led off with my Scyther, and packed a Typhlosion as my second Pokemon. My roommate began with his Rhyperior, but I can’t recall what his second Pokemon was. It’s inconsequential anyway, as his Rhyperior rarely died. The beauty of this combination was something that gradually unfolded over time.

One of the first things we appreciated is that Rhyperior’s Earthquake didn’t affect Scyther because of his Flying type. Earthquake is an immensely powerful Ground type move, augmented by the Same Type Attack Bonus that Rhyperior receives. Furthermore, it hits all Pokemon around the user, allowing us to hit both opponents at once. Tons of damage, without the side effect of damaging my own Pokemon.

Soon after, we realized that Rhyperior’s Lightningrod ability pulled Electric moves away from Scyther and onto Rhyperior. Scyther’s Flying type makes him weak to Electric moves, but Rhyperior’s Ground type makes him completely immune to Electric. This means that any Electric Pokemon we encountered were hit 2x by Rhyperior’s Earthquake, and couldn’t possibly do any damage with Electric type moves.

Finally, Rhyperior’s hold item was Quick Claw, an item that causes the holder to strike first 10% of the time. Scyther has particularly high speed, and often struck first. Rhyperior, however, is notoriously slow and often attacked last out of the 4 Pokemon on the field. Quick Claw gave him the first hit for the occasional clinch victory, and I swear it happened closer to 50% of the time than 10% as it is supposed to.

Other than those key benefits, our combination just had really good cohesion and a lot of type coverage. What Scyther was weak to, Rhyperior was often strong against, and vice versa. In the few cases that we needed something else, I could swap in Typhlosion and use powerful Fire moves without much risk to Rhyperior. Fire does half damage to Ground, Rhyperior was bulky anyway.

We spent many an evening in the dorm room, playing the Battle Tower doubles over the Nintendo DS ad hoc connection. We never got tremendously far in, and would often die in completely unfair ways, but we really had a good time. Other than the one time when we were on a roll and the connection spontaneously dropped when we were not more than 5 feet from each other, it was super fun. To this day, I don’t think anything I’ve done in any Pokemon game has come anywhere close to those evenings.

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