Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

The game has a lot more abilities than you would think when you create a new character and look at the skills you can learn. You get the ability to use a subclass skill every 5 levels and once you unlock your job there are a number of job-specific skills (although this limits the subclass skills you can use). I think you have at least two learnable skills through quests as well.

It's not completely bloated but I wouldn't call the skill list small.

I think lots of skills are ok so long as they aren't just lame versions of each other, and also if they limit how many simultaneous skills you can use. It's more fun deciding what skillets work best for what scenarios than just spamming everything constantly

Hey guys. I haven't been active on this thread, but I have read quite a bit of it over time. (I finally registered a new account here since the move off the...other.. location.) I know there has been a lot of questions about the end-game content in FFXIV:ARR, and there has been only a small amount of information out there about the end-game. Over the course of this week, we received some information from a contact inside SquareEnix about their end-game plans and content--and was given approval to publish the information.

It's fairly lengthy, however I recommend you guys pop over to the mostrecent editorial at EorzeaReborn. The +30 content section on page 3 offers some previously unknown information about the layout and progression in the end game. (specifically addressing questions from posters here about level 50 dungeons, raids, fates, etc).

Good article for new people coming into the game and wondering what to expect, but there's nothing in there new from some inside contact or whatever.

Yea that's a great article to post somewhere for people who only played a little of the beta and were questioning the shitty 1-15 quest grind. The only part I found interesting was revisiting the leveling dungeons with 8 man parties. When you factor in that you're already reusing that content on your secondary classes that may get old fast if it's just a total recycle + 1 new boss.

Hmm, I hadn't seen any discussion about what types of dungeons would be the 4-man vs the 8-man content..and definate confirmation of dungeon expansion on bosses for those hardmodes. As well as confirmation that some of the primals will be not only FATEs, but also dungeon/instances raid content.. Additionally the info about the two raids including the layouts and keying of levels..as well as difficulty rank (crystal tower is easier). Finally I hadn't see info about how guild houses will provide shared banking as well as crafting bonuses.

Some of it might all be out there, but I have been reading a lot of stuff with folks asking and little (to no ) definate answers. We tried to clarify and confirm a lot of speculation. Since we had a chance, and they were willing to allow us to post this.

But we could have just missed this all previously.

(Edit: we also didn't know that if you unlock both summoner and scholar...and level scholar to 50... Your arcanist and scholar...and summoner...would be 50. Last I knew it was possible you might have to level that too)

You don't actually turn into a scholar or summoner with a separate leveling path(as far as I know), you stay as an arcanist and the soul crystal you use gives you the abilities of those classes at whatever level they are. Getting to 50 as an arcanist should allow you to, if you have the soul, just pop into the level 50 version of each. Unless they put in lots of quests to unlock class specific abilities or something, which there isn't any information about. At least, that is how it is described.

Yeah. There's no such thing as a level 50 job. You earn levels as a class only. A job is literally just an item that alters your abilities. So leveling ACN to 50 will let you play as Scholar or summoner at that level as long as you have the soul item from finishing the unlock quest. That's how I understood it.

It's a great consolidation of previously unconfirmed information. But aside from the reuse of old content and the tower defense guildhest (??) I had seen pretty much all the rest as accepted rumors in various places, mainly the official forums. Oh, and some of the dungeon names are new to me since I didn't play 1.0

Lots of new information to the general public, I'm sure.

Yea, seems like a great decision, kind of like dual-spec without the annoying dual-spec system from wow. Your base class is functional for solo play, while your job gives you a group-specific specialization advantages.

Artifa_sl said:

Yeah. There's no such thing as a level 50 job. You earn levels as a class only. A job is literally just an item that alters your abilities. So leveling ACN to 50 will let you play as Scholar or summoner at that level as long as you have the soul item from finishing the unlock quest. That's how I understood it.

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The only reason I'm not a fan of this is when they add...say Dark Knight to Gladiator. Everyone who has a Lv50 Glad/Paladin doesn't get to experience any of the leveling process with DRK.

And people who start with Arcanist get a 2 for 1 Healer/DPS combo while everyone else is stuck with one role.

Overall it's probably better to deal with these minor annoyances than have to grind a near infinite number of classes, though.

tower_sl said:

It's a great consolidation of previously unconfirmed information. But aside from the reuse of old content and the tower defense guildhest (??) I had seen pretty much all the rest as accepted rumors in various places, mainly the official forums. Oh, and some of the dungeon names are new to me since I didn't play 1.0

Lots of new information to the general public, I'm sure.

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That is kinda what we were going for. When we first started to write it up the approach was an attempt to pull together what was known & suspect, differentiating the two. We then decided to run it by an SE contact, mostly from the framework of...."if we are completely off the msrk on something, please let us know and we would retract before publishing." Instead we were told, yes..and btw...include x, y, and z also.

They did tell us some of the stuff was from untranslated letters, as well as some of it expanding and confirming previous speculation.

Artifa_sl said:

Yeah. There's no such thing as a level 50 job. You earn levels as a class only. A job is literally just an item that alters your abilities. So leveling ACN to 50 will let you play as Scholar or summoner at that level as long as you have the soul item from finishing the unlock quest. That's how I understood it.

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This is an example of the confirmation. There was speculation this would be how it worked, but it hadn't been confirmed that both jobs would be 50, or if the second job would be different. We were told that, yes both would be 50.

This whole multiple job thing is kinda disappointing. Rift was a complete failure to me in that you had to play a base class in a cookie cutter spec in raids or don't play at all. Will be really disappointed if that happens with this game. If I wanna play monk, I better not be forced to play ranger for example.

Erie_sl said:

This whole multiple job thing is kinda disappointing. Rift was a complete failure to me in that you had to play a base class in a cookie cutter spec in raids or don't play at all. Will be really disappointed if that happens with this game. If I wanna play monk, I better not be forced to play ranger for example.

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I played with a couple monks (or whatever they are called)...No DPS meter, but eyeballing the time to kill shit with them in the group vs another mele, it was definitely quicker.

New jobs that are released on base classes will see people starting at 50 which is a concern I guess but it ties in with the "game starts at 50" thing, and reinforces the fact that this game, like many others, will live or die based on content production. If they can pump out new raids as well as new forms of content at the rate of wow or faster, FFXIV will be great. If people can max level and gear 2-3 classes/jobs and there's nothing new, all but the FF diehards will likely quit like so many games before it.

Artifa_sl said:

New jobs that are released on base classes will see people starting at 50 which is a concern I guess but it ties in with the "game starts at 50" thing, and reinforces the fact that this game, like many others, will live or die based on content production. If they can pump out new raids as well as new forms of content at the rate of wow or faster, FFXIV will be great. If people can max level and gear 2-3 classes/jobs and there's nothing new, all but the FF diehards will likely quit like so many games before it.

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One of the things we were told was the set up of the crystal tower specifically, but also the maze, will allow rapid expansion of raid content. I'm not sure how it will play out, but it is intriguing.

Seriously? Content faster than wow? I believe a deaf blind monkey with no arms could create content faster than the "committee to investigate taking a bathroom break after lunch" development crew that WoW has suffered under for the last 6 years.

Intrinsic_sl said:

...because Arcanists have infinite mana...

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Thaumaturge... not Arcanist. We have not played the Arcanist yet.



Also, some abilities for classes / jobs are quested (at least that is what I remember). I can see this happening for new jobs that get added later on just to counter level 50's having everything once they get a new job soul. I wouldn't expect that all abilities need to be quested, but there is the potential for more ways to open up and provide content.

One thing I do like about FF vs. other MMO's is their story telling and world lore, if you are not into FF then this game is most likely not the game for you.

FFXIV is not ground breaking in terms of what it brings to the table, there are some things that FFXIV does that is different and SE has definitely brought all current MMO elements together in a way that seem to play nicer... at least for me.

So, the game is what it is. I wouldn't say FFXIV is the best thing since WoW, but the game is also not the worst thing to play either.