Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Pharone said:
I started from scratch last month after playing EverQuest for 17+ years, and I can tell you that I wish I had switched to FFXIV many, many years ago. This game is fucking awesome. Seriously. The UI takes a lot of tweaking to get it right, but the game is just a shit ton better than anything else on the market right now.

From what I have seen so far, FFXIV is super solo friendly (at least for me up to level 36 so far) yet has amazingly well designed group content in the dungeons (I haven't tried raiding yet) and everything seems so accessible YET rewarding. I find it interesting that WoW took the same "super accessible" idea and made a game that feels 100% shallow. Why is it that FFXIV can make it feel as rewarding doing everything and WoW makes the same sort of achievements feel completely shallow and not worth the time you put in to accomplishing them?

There is a metric butt ton of shit to do in FFXIV, and it's fun and rewarding to accomplish. I can't say the same thing about WoW and EverQuest; the two games I played the most in the past 17 years.

Also, the over arching story with cut scenes is something I really like about FFXIV. There was always an over arching story to WoW and EverQuest obviously, but I never truly kept up with it. It was just the flavor text behind some of the quests. It was there, but I didn't necessarily read most of it. In FFXIV, the story is front and center, and I actually have a fucking clue why I am doing what I am doing in the content.

Plus... the dungeons. There are "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" moments in dungeons. It's not just run from mob to mob along the treadmill to the end boss. I mean, yes you do that, but there are things that happen graphically (animations and such) that happen during the fights that you would normally only expect to see in raid content. I have literally exlcaimed shit like "holy fucking hell did that just happen" while playing a dungeon for the first time in FFXIV. It's shit that you would normally only see in single player games.
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Thanks for the insight - I appreciate it! Still mulling it over to see what I want to do!
 
Pharone

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Kriptini said:
Because the game's pet system is not good and has barely improved over the years.
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Droigan said:
Well it's been years since I played it, and it is definitely worse now. As in there is no pet system only a convoluted dot system.
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I personally have never understood why MMORPGs don't just make the pet's stats some sort of reflection of the player who owns the pet. That way, there is no real issues with balancing the class due to it being a duo party rather than a single character like all other classes.

That way there, the player's character can stand back from the combat and let the pet tank, but the player doesn't have the benefit of effectively being 2 players at once. When the pet dies, throw a short buff on the player that gives them a chance to cast another pet, and if they can't pull it off in time, they go down faster than a dress on prom night. The player is in essence the pet, but gets the benefit of playing from a distance.

I don't know. It's just I see this in so many MMOs. Pet classes start out awesome, and over time they get nerfed in to oblivion because they are OP. I think that game designers are approaching pet classes incorrectly from the get go. The player typically want to play with the pet being the focus of the player in most cases, and they do not want their pets to be just a visual DoT.
 
Fyff

Fyff

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Scholar main story quest is easy. I can't imagine summoner is hard though. It takes me like 30 seconds to solo a quest mob with my chocobo out. It's literally spam broil because it's your only button.

Honestly though I was level 79 before I got the challenge log for killing 100 mobs with my chocobo out so the main story has almost no combat.
 
Daidraco

Daidraco

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The MSQ shows its colors in ARR with being fetch and travel quests. I would have took a gun to my head if Aeth crystals werent around, or Gil acquisition was back to original levels.
 
Valderen

Valderen

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So with early access about to end. I'm fairly happy with what I was able to do. I mostly took stuff slow going through the MSQ as I do it with a friend.

I'm level 73 only, about to reach Titania in the MSQ. The story so far is shaping up to be my favorite, I hope it keeps up the good work.

I only saw The Crystarium, Eulmore, Lakeland, half of Kholusia, half of Amh Araeng, and Il Mheg and haven't been to the rest yet. I must saw the new zones look absolutly gorgeous...Lakeland, and Il Mheg are probably the best looking zones in FF14 in my opinion. Overall they seem to have gone with a more vibrant color palette, even a desert zone like Amh Araeng is more vibrant then their usual desert zones.

I also reach 63 on Dancer which is quite fun. I'll continue leveling it slowly when I have time, mostly just doing the Stormblood Beast Tribes for now.

I reached 77 on my miner, 74 on botanist, and 71 on fisher. The corresponding retainers are 72, 72 and 71 so they gather from Shadowbringers zones, 2 Red Mage retainers at 71 or 72, I forgot...also now going on mission in Shadowbringers.

As was my goal for early access, I manage to make some decent money(for me). The most I ever had in FF14 was about 5M, and that went to 8M in the last 4 weeks before expansion came out, so I'm not good at making money...but I did manage to make about 6M since expansion launched, spent a bit to gear up the retainers so they could do stuff in Shadowbringers...so I'm an 13M right now. I'm quite satisfied with my progress.

The trust is very convenient to go through the MSQ dungeons, used it for the 2 dungeons so far. Dungeons are more linear then ever, but I must say they both looked very nice.

So far, I'm enjoying the expansion very much. Not sure how it'll all work out, but it shaping up to maybe be the best one yet.

My biggest annoyance so far, is tanks always forgetting to be in tank stance in the beginning leading up to a horrible first pull with zero aggro. Happened quite a bit...one tank mentioned that it's turned off every time he enters a dungeon.

Well off to go...gather some more I guess. :)
 
Nola

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Valderen said:
My biggest annoyance so far, is tanks always forgetting to be in tank stance in the beginning leading up to a horrible first pull with zero aggro. Happened quite a bit...one tank mentioned that it's turned off every time he enters a dungeon.
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What.... There's no reason really not to have it on all the time. Not like it's a DPS loss. Stupid tanks.
 
Daidraco

Daidraco

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Its the way the damn thing is coded right now. The damn skill should default to on, instead it defaults to off. So when you log on, its off. When you switch classes, its off. Its nice to be able to turn enmity generation off, but the thing is coded backwards. So I can see how it can be a quality of life thing. But your tanks are still morons if they cant remember to turn it on before they race into a trash pack. It happened "once" with me and now its on a personal check list item of mine along with food.
 
Pyros

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Pharone said:
I personally have never understood why MMORPGs don't just make the pet's stats some sort of reflection of the player who owns the pet. That way, there is no real issues with balancing the class due to it being a duo party rather than a single character like all other classes.

That way there, the player's character can stand back from the combat and let the pet tank, but the player doesn't have the benefit of effectively being 2 players at once. When the pet dies, throw a short buff on the player that gives them a chance to cast another pet, and if they can't pull it off in time, they go down faster than a dress on prom night. The player is in essence the pet, but gets the benefit of playing from a distance.

I don't know. It's just I see this in so many MMOs. Pet classes start out awesome, and over time they get nerfed in to oblivion because they are OP. I think that game designers are approaching pet classes incorrectly from the get go. The player typically want to play with the pet being the focus of the player in most cases, and they do not want their pets to be just a visual DoT.
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Pets stats scale off players. They weren't OP because of the pets. The pets removal is just something that goes toward their goal of simplifying a bunch of stuff for bad players. It sadly had the unintended effect of making said players bitch about missing Titan. Titan was always an unnecessary crutch and no one with a clue would ever use it, because it was just less damage than either of the other pets, and damage is all that matters, including when soloing, for the vast majority of content. Titan's use was only for some specific content(like solo potd high floor or soloing some parts of coil or whatever) and for that it does suck it can't be done anymore, but for actual leveling and shit, you should always have been using Ifrit or Garuda(ifrit being easier to just leave on sic and not care about).
 
Valderen

Valderen

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So I posted 3 hours ago that I had 13M, and made 6M since early access started and that I was off to go gather some more.

Fast forward 3 hours, I made 3M more, and almost everything I just gathered is sold off. I can't keep my retainers stocked. :)
 
khorum

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So if they got 600+ queues at 430pm the day before release, how much of a fucking clownshow will it be this time tomorrow?
 
Noodleface

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Daidraco said:
Its the way the damn thing is coded right now. The damn skill should default to on, instead it defaults to off. So when you log on, its off. When you switch classes, its off. Its nice to be able to turn enmity generation off, but the thing is coded backwards. So I can see how it can be a quality of life thing. But your tanks are still morons if they cant remember to turn it on before they race into a trash pack. It happened "once" with me and now its on a personal check list item of mine along with food.
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Yeah it's real wonky. I feel like there's one dude there making decisions and everyone blindly followed it. Yoshi said he remade FFXIV based on playing wow. Maybe he should play again
 
Fyff

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khorum said:
So if they got 600+ queues at 430pm the day before release, how much of a fucking clownshow will it be this time tomorrow?
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My guess is anyone who cares about the game was playing over the weekend. Early Access doesn't mean anything in MMOs. It's a marketing tactic.
 
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Valderen

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I made it to Titania, but we failed the DPS check. The group was doing ok with mechanics, but we were nowhere close to passing the DPS check phase. On most fights we didn’t even get the third big guy below 75%, we got it once to under 50% using LB3.

Again this community amazes me, we tried for 45 minutes, no one got impatient, we talk about what we could do differently, which order to kill the adds, the use of the Limit Break to help us pass the DPS phase. Everyone was nice.

It’s pretty brutal to have a big DPS check this early on a MSQ trial.
 
Cybsled

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It really comes down to the order. When you get to the giant tree part, killing the trees from left to right seems to work best.
 
Rezz

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Could also be healer related. You'd be surprised how many healers aren't DPSing consistently when they aren't in crazy healer mode. I don't typically see it super often in 8 mans, but it's definitely a thing in 24s and in 4man group content when I'm not on the WHM.
 
khorum

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If it’s a new group on Titania the healers will be healing and rezzing during the giant tree phase until the dps successfully avoid the incoming avoidable damage.

If the healers are able to dps AT ALL during that phase it means the dps aren’t eating aoes and it’s almost certainly a kill with or without healer dps.
 
dvoraen

dvoraen

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khorum said:
If it’s a new group on Titania the healers will be healing and rezzing during the giant tree phase until the dps successfully avoid the incoming avoidable damage.

If the healers are able to dps AT ALL during that phase it means the dps aren’t eating aoes and it’s almost certainly a kill with or without healer dps.
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This is completely the truth. It's also the truth for the other trials too. The DPS have an arguably stricter check on trial #2's add phase.
 
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Pyros

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You'd be surprised at how shit some of the DPS are, especially when they're trying to avoid damage at the same time. I one shot it with the grp I had so can't really say, but I was top DPS as a Dancer, so it wasn't really that good, just I guess no one was really dragging everyone else down. Meanwhile I had a 4000DPS SAM earlier in the 79dungeon and that's counting the trash packs(which he wasn't aoeing on, obviously, because damaged brain).

Had to install an actual damage meter overlay so I can see DPS in realtime so I know who to buff if I picked a retard at the start(in 8mans obviously, in 4man it's hard to pick anyone else besides the other DPS). I've had to change it a few times so far, especially after seeing some MCH shitting on everyone else by a huge margin, it seems these fucks do a lot of damage now.

Really liking Dancer, it's very simple yet somehow interesting unlike RDM. The main annoyance is it's really hard so far for me to play without constantly looking at my bars. Reminds me of BRD in that sense, you have to keep an eye on all the procs and hit them right away. The normal GCD ones not so much because you can "stock" them and spend them whenever, but have to check fan feathers to spend them as you get them(while sitting at 3 so you pool them for burst window with cooldowns), have to keep an eye on Esprit gauge filling up so you don't overcap that either and then keep track of cooldowns as usual. The burst window gets realy hectic too when you use Flourish and now you have like half your bar lit up and you have to prioritize every GCD while double weaving feathers.

Might get easier once I'm more comfortable with it I guess, especially the burst phase I should work on it for a little while.
 
Asmadai

Asmadai

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This expansion was so much better than Stormblood was, imo. The writing, the zones, everything was just superior. Now I gotta grind out them Goets and get my EX kills in while the gettin's good.

The new systems thought are interesting. I didn't realize that the Shared FATE system gives you a "rank" for each new zone basically, so it gives you a reason to do fates. Getting a higher Rank means the Gem Vendors sell more shit.

And the new Trust system fully unlocks at 80. Looks like they are scrapping Squadrons entirely, cause even tho you are 80 all the other story NPCs are back to level 71 and you gotta re-grind them to 80. Looks like a viable method of leveling up other chars though post-70; the Trust AI seems way smarter to me than the Squadron AI did, and aside from the dungeons dropping less items you can really push your Healer NPC and pull massive packs if you are a tank, and as long as you use your cooldowns properly the NPC will keep you alive.
 
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