StoiCynic
Trakanon Raider
- 2,686
- 992
I agree that switching classes on the fly is a great mechanic. I just can't imagine how long it will take to grind multiple jobs to cap. Unless you go CNJ > WHM/SMN.
Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)
- Thread starter Guzrog
- Start date
- 11,060
- 2,262
Well from what we've seen, it doesn't take all that long to get to 35 and that's a good way toward 50. Xp might slow down super heavily in the last 10 levels like say Aion, but we don't know that for sure yet. It's a lot closer to vanilla wow than old school mmos like FFXI and EQ in terms of lvling speed so far, so leveling all jobs might not be as painful as it looks, plus you get a matchmaking tool for group content so it makes searching for group easier, while there's also a lot of solo content for when you can't find a group, which FFXI for example had 0 of back when I played, if you weren't a Beastermaster you were basically fucked past 30-40 without a group(and you needed a decent group to even get good xp due to chain bonus and shit like that).
Just wish they'd start P4 and have the Arcanist to play.
Just wish they'd start P4 and have the Arcanist to play.
Selix
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 2,149
- 4
Since P4 is no wipe (I think) but no access to ARC I think I will just level CON (I think I read somewhere that you will need CON and ARC to get Summoner) to 10 and then focus on crafting classes full time until the game goes live.
I wrote a whole ton of words to describe the midgame a bit to the members of my LS who haven't made it there yet or haven't gotten beta keys. Reposting it here.
---
So I spent the final night of the beta running around with a group of really excellent Japanese players, and got a good taste of what I think the game has to offer for daily play (not including level 50 endgame/raid content of course, as we're not there in beta). I'll be writing from a tank (Gladiator) perspective, as that's my highest level class right now.
First, a big blob about tanking. If you don't care about tanking mechanics, skip to below the dotted line.
So, PRIOR to level 29 (Haukke Manor, the second highest dungeon currently available) I was starting to get really down on Gladiator. The tank rotation for Gladiator is 1>2>3>1>2>3 ad infinitum, where 1 is your basic attack, 2 is Savage Blade, and 3 is Rage of Halome. If you have MP, you can flash every two rotations to keep up the Blind effect, but that's just about all that Flash is good for. It will hold hate off a healer, but any AoE damage from a THM and you have to single target for threat. If a boss has a skill or spell you want to stun, you do have a skill for that. However, it's on the GCD. So if you want to stun something, you have to sit there waiting while doing nothing else. It also breaks your skillchain, costing you even more threat while you start it over. You have a reactive shield bash type skill which is also on the GCD, making it clumsy (although its damage per TP and damage per second are quite good, and it doesn't break your 1>2>3 combo).
So level 29, when THMs had good nukes and I had all my hate tools available, was when the tanking game got fun for me. Yes, the rotation was still the same 1>2>3, and it will be that way at level 50. So single target tanking a boss is still awful. But AoE tanking against competent DDs was very fun. I could start a pull with shield lob+Flash to get things going. Then all hell would break loose. The ARC in my party laid down impressive single target damage, so I was obligated to start on his mob with a 1>2. But by the time I had those down, the THM was rapidly pulling threat on everything else so I had to tab target and put my 3 on a second mob. Then I had to tab to another and 1>2 and quickly decide if I could afford to lay the 3 on a 4th target or if I had to put it back on the primary so the ARC didn't pull. Usually I'd have to use offensive cooldowns to generate enough threat as I went. A couple of the trash pulls in Haukke Manor were also extremely intense, so despite rather good gear I had to constantly rotate defensive cooldowns. These, like offensive cooldowns, are not on the GCD. However, they seem to have their own "buff-class" GCD, as you can't just spam them as fast as you want. All in all, AoE tanking at high levels was a frantic mess that was a lot of fun. Single target tanking was lame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, tanking rant over!
So activities:
The dungeons are nicely done, and Haukke Manor (level 29-31) is the best I've done so far. It has a lot of classic MMO dungeon elements that have largely been forsaken in newer games. Roaming patrols, pulls that can be split if you're smart, and so on. This kind of attention to fundamentals will, in my opinion, give the game more longevity than dungeon design based purely on "follow the script and don't stand in the red circle." Most of the boss scripts did also involve some sort of teamwork element, and failing on them usually meant that it would become harder to succeed rather than an instant wipe. In fact, we actually had a case where our Archer and I died outright (the servers are running with a HUGE amount of latency right now, this needs to get better before launch) and the THM and CNJ were able to do the last 30% of the final boss through a lot of kiting and crowd control. Really impressive that player skill can have that much of an impact, and I love it.
Guildhests are another very cool activity. Starting at level 10, you gain access to 2 per 5 levels, going at least as high as level 30. These are 4-person minidungeons; either a single room or a small enclosed area. The first few are meant to serve as training exercises in party tactics, and give pretty good instructions as to the strategies that will help you succeed. Things like focus fire, killing adds so the boss is left to stand alone, curing status effects, and so on. Later guildhests are more like challenges, where you need to do the mechanics well or things get out of hand quickly. Sort of a 4-person event with more raidlike tuning. Something for a small group of people to work at and feel like they've accomplished something when they beat it.
The last thing we really got involved in was a roaming FATE party in South Shroud. For anyone who has played RIFT: FATEs are Rifts. A localized event on the map that any player can go and join in, where they'll be rewarded based on how much they contributed to the fight. By running/teleporting around with your party (or I guess solo if you can count on other parties to be there), you can gain huge amounts of XP/gil/Company seals. There was pretty good variation in the higher level FATEs; some were just a pack of mobs to kill, but others involved laying siege to a camp (or defending the camp if the prior siege had been successful) or killing a boss monster. The giant stone golem was basically an HNM fight. It had lots of HP, highly damaging skills that could be stunned or dodged (by running out of the frontal cone), and rewarded truckloads of XP. During the brief downtime between the FATE respawns (sometimes there was none, if it was just our one party clearing them out), we would run regular guildleves that we linked together.
So there's a fair bit to do, and the XP required to level around the mid-30s was high enough that you actually got to do a bunch of these things rather than instantly leveling out of them, but not so high that it felt like you weren't making progress. I got from 29-32 in one long evening of doing these 3 things.
---
So I spent the final night of the beta running around with a group of really excellent Japanese players, and got a good taste of what I think the game has to offer for daily play (not including level 50 endgame/raid content of course, as we're not there in beta). I'll be writing from a tank (Gladiator) perspective, as that's my highest level class right now.
First, a big blob about tanking. If you don't care about tanking mechanics, skip to below the dotted line.
So, PRIOR to level 29 (Haukke Manor, the second highest dungeon currently available) I was starting to get really down on Gladiator. The tank rotation for Gladiator is 1>2>3>1>2>3 ad infinitum, where 1 is your basic attack, 2 is Savage Blade, and 3 is Rage of Halome. If you have MP, you can flash every two rotations to keep up the Blind effect, but that's just about all that Flash is good for. It will hold hate off a healer, but any AoE damage from a THM and you have to single target for threat. If a boss has a skill or spell you want to stun, you do have a skill for that. However, it's on the GCD. So if you want to stun something, you have to sit there waiting while doing nothing else. It also breaks your skillchain, costing you even more threat while you start it over. You have a reactive shield bash type skill which is also on the GCD, making it clumsy (although its damage per TP and damage per second are quite good, and it doesn't break your 1>2>3 combo).
So level 29, when THMs had good nukes and I had all my hate tools available, was when the tanking game got fun for me. Yes, the rotation was still the same 1>2>3, and it will be that way at level 50. So single target tanking a boss is still awful. But AoE tanking against competent DDs was very fun. I could start a pull with shield lob+Flash to get things going. Then all hell would break loose. The ARC in my party laid down impressive single target damage, so I was obligated to start on his mob with a 1>2. But by the time I had those down, the THM was rapidly pulling threat on everything else so I had to tab target and put my 3 on a second mob. Then I had to tab to another and 1>2 and quickly decide if I could afford to lay the 3 on a 4th target or if I had to put it back on the primary so the ARC didn't pull. Usually I'd have to use offensive cooldowns to generate enough threat as I went. A couple of the trash pulls in Haukke Manor were also extremely intense, so despite rather good gear I had to constantly rotate defensive cooldowns. These, like offensive cooldowns, are not on the GCD. However, they seem to have their own "buff-class" GCD, as you can't just spam them as fast as you want. All in all, AoE tanking at high levels was a frantic mess that was a lot of fun. Single target tanking was lame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, tanking rant over!
So activities:
The dungeons are nicely done, and Haukke Manor (level 29-31) is the best I've done so far. It has a lot of classic MMO dungeon elements that have largely been forsaken in newer games. Roaming patrols, pulls that can be split if you're smart, and so on. This kind of attention to fundamentals will, in my opinion, give the game more longevity than dungeon design based purely on "follow the script and don't stand in the red circle." Most of the boss scripts did also involve some sort of teamwork element, and failing on them usually meant that it would become harder to succeed rather than an instant wipe. In fact, we actually had a case where our Archer and I died outright (the servers are running with a HUGE amount of latency right now, this needs to get better before launch) and the THM and CNJ were able to do the last 30% of the final boss through a lot of kiting and crowd control. Really impressive that player skill can have that much of an impact, and I love it.
Guildhests are another very cool activity. Starting at level 10, you gain access to 2 per 5 levels, going at least as high as level 30. These are 4-person minidungeons; either a single room or a small enclosed area. The first few are meant to serve as training exercises in party tactics, and give pretty good instructions as to the strategies that will help you succeed. Things like focus fire, killing adds so the boss is left to stand alone, curing status effects, and so on. Later guildhests are more like challenges, where you need to do the mechanics well or things get out of hand quickly. Sort of a 4-person event with more raidlike tuning. Something for a small group of people to work at and feel like they've accomplished something when they beat it.
The last thing we really got involved in was a roaming FATE party in South Shroud. For anyone who has played RIFT: FATEs are Rifts. A localized event on the map that any player can go and join in, where they'll be rewarded based on how much they contributed to the fight. By running/teleporting around with your party (or I guess solo if you can count on other parties to be there), you can gain huge amounts of XP/gil/Company seals. There was pretty good variation in the higher level FATEs; some were just a pack of mobs to kill, but others involved laying siege to a camp (or defending the camp if the prior siege had been successful) or killing a boss monster. The giant stone golem was basically an HNM fight. It had lots of HP, highly damaging skills that could be stunned or dodged (by running out of the frontal cone), and rewarded truckloads of XP. During the brief downtime between the FATE respawns (sometimes there was none, if it was just our one party clearing them out), we would run regular guildleves that we linked together.
So there's a fair bit to do, and the XP required to level around the mid-30s was high enough that you actually got to do a bunch of these things rather than instantly leveling out of them, but not so high that it felt like you weren't making progress. I got from 29-32 in one long evening of doing these 3 things.
The 2.5s GCD is the best part of the game for me. I greatly prefer the slower pace of it and I'm glad that they're sticking to this number fairly hardcore.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
- 4,486
- 3,531
From my experience playing one character with Cnj at 20 and a couple others at 8 with both gathering skills to 13ish and leatherworking to like 14 (way too lazy to remember) the key is definitely doing leves. But I also didn't do a single quest from 15+ that wasn't the main story and zero non-class quests for either of the other two cities (I did -every- 1-14 quest in and around Gridania). The gathering was primarily leveled by chaining leves (since I didn't do them with my combat classes and only like 5 hand ins for LW) and they were honestly super painless. If anything, leveling LW would have been faster/easier had I concentrated on just free mining/botany instead of doing the leves, but for sheer speed they really can't be beaten once you have discovered everything nearby for your level range. The key for the gathering leves(so far) is having +gathering and +GP, ignore perception entirely. Doing so almost guarantees you can do the +4 difficulty with zero problem and get massive XP/Gil bonuses comparatively. Really not uncommon to have a base reward around 1k and a bonus around 1.5k added on, especially once you know the areas.
So crafting... has been covered! Going the pure HQ route pretty much means once you do the legwork with gathering skills (and procurring lots of HQ mats by having high perception for when you aren't doing leves) you can do the leve-free chaining of quests plus making the HQ versions of items gives you more xp anyway, just as gathering HQ mats with high perception gives like 3-4x the xp of getting the normal mat. Seems like the people who don't plan on just dropping white quality gear on their character/the market will definitely pick up both gathering skills and plowing into those primarily before crafting a ton. Though it should be said, that stopping while gathering at certain tiers to make sure you have at least some of the gathering related gear makes the whole process more streamlined. Plus it helps with the crafting action anyway.
So for the first 3... possibly 4 combat classes if you don't do -every- quest in each area as you level and instead hit the H log early and hard, you should be able to get into the sweet range of groupable content fairly easily, and then rock that action like a champ to progress the combat classes without too much pain. Then by just dropping your excess drops (like getting one pink quality weapon for each class out of the starter dungeons. Holy shit did getting that over a green wand make a difference for my cnj's healing. 30hp difference per cure is massive in this game) onto characters and using the leve system outside of whatever you use for crafting/gathering, if you do them at all, should make for a relatively smooth overall leveling process.
Plus 1-16 (when the group game starts) doesn't really take long at all. I imagine that higher quality food will have higher +xp ratings, in theory, thus making it even easier to level unless they put hard level limits on that shit. Or further grand company items might make it easier as well.
Overall, the process of leveling lots of classes/crafting/gathering shit on one character might seem involved, but it really does sort of feel organic once you get into it. The only thing stopping me after experimenting to 8 without doing any leves/quests was knowing that this shit is getting wiped and it wasn't worth my time after realizing the scope of what I wanted to do. P4/release build cannot come fast enough.
So crafting... has been covered! Going the pure HQ route pretty much means once you do the legwork with gathering skills (and procurring lots of HQ mats by having high perception for when you aren't doing leves) you can do the leve-free chaining of quests plus making the HQ versions of items gives you more xp anyway, just as gathering HQ mats with high perception gives like 3-4x the xp of getting the normal mat. Seems like the people who don't plan on just dropping white quality gear on their character/the market will definitely pick up both gathering skills and plowing into those primarily before crafting a ton. Though it should be said, that stopping while gathering at certain tiers to make sure you have at least some of the gathering related gear makes the whole process more streamlined. Plus it helps with the crafting action anyway.
So for the first 3... possibly 4 combat classes if you don't do -every- quest in each area as you level and instead hit the H log early and hard, you should be able to get into the sweet range of groupable content fairly easily, and then rock that action like a champ to progress the combat classes without too much pain. Then by just dropping your excess drops (like getting one pink quality weapon for each class out of the starter dungeons. Holy shit did getting that over a green wand make a difference for my cnj's healing. 30hp difference per cure is massive in this game) onto characters and using the leve system outside of whatever you use for crafting/gathering, if you do them at all, should make for a relatively smooth overall leveling process.
Plus 1-16 (when the group game starts) doesn't really take long at all. I imagine that higher quality food will have higher +xp ratings, in theory, thus making it even easier to level unless they put hard level limits on that shit. Or further grand company items might make it easier as well.
Overall, the process of leveling lots of classes/crafting/gathering shit on one character might seem involved, but it really does sort of feel organic once you get into it. The only thing stopping me after experimenting to 8 without doing any leves/quests was knowing that this shit is getting wiped and it wasn't worth my time after realizing the scope of what I wanted to do. P4/release build cannot come fast enough.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I really enjoyed doing just 4 man groups when I did dungeon runs in P2. I thought they were a more fun and intimate affair than 5/6 man groups (I hate 6 man groups) and it felt like a pretty good number.
The low-midgame content is a snooze fest, we've done all the 15-35 dungeons available several times with ghetto group make ups (LNC LNC THM THM, LNC ARC THM PUG). No tanks with thaums healing with Cure. You don't specifically need the tank or healing specialists for that stuff. Their "revamp" of Haukke Manor to make it more difficult was the equivalent of adding 4 wandering trash mobs.
Considering how extremely easy the low and mid level game is I hope they ramp up the difficulty by several notches in the 40+ range. Not beta testing anything in that range is just asking for it.
Also I don't have a clue how they expect you to level after your second job. Guildhests do not refresh after the first time you do them after switching jobs, and the repeatable exp reward is awful. Leve quests are the equivalent of dailies and will take up about 30 minutes of your time per refresh. Hunting Logs will not make up for the massive amount of exp you get going through the main scenario your first time around. Side quests are few and far between that don't include the main scenario, and will be gone in all three cities by the time you start your third job. So that leaves dungeons and fate grinding. Which I'm all for (minus the fates) but I can see the tears starting in johnny casual already.
Considering how extremely easy the low and mid level game is I hope they ramp up the difficulty by several notches in the 40+ range. Not beta testing anything in that range is just asking for it.
Also I don't have a clue how they expect you to level after your second job. Guildhests do not refresh after the first time you do them after switching jobs, and the repeatable exp reward is awful. Leve quests are the equivalent of dailies and will take up about 30 minutes of your time per refresh. Hunting Logs will not make up for the massive amount of exp you get going through the main scenario your first time around. Side quests are few and far between that don't include the main scenario, and will be gone in all three cities by the time you start your third job. So that leaves dungeons and fate grinding. Which I'm all for (minus the fates) but I can see the tears starting in johnny casual already.
The exp is slower on your other jobs but that is a good thing ~ if you want to be a swiss army knife, you are going to earn it with time invested. Using leves and other city quests wisely will help. If you find yourself in grind mode, mobs spawn relatively fast ~ find a set of mobs that drop tradeskill items you need (shards/ore etc) and farm those for both exp and mats. I did this on a few classes and it helped me through a bit of the tedium since I was gaining a currency. As you mention, casual players may be a little down trodden but it will be interesting to see how this keeps the low-midgame alive for a longer period of time than a typical cap level game.
Is this a good "OMG I can't stand the idea of logging into EVE at the moment" game? Is there too much content/stuff for me to do if I just want to grind/quest for a few hours a week or would I just end up not seeing most of the game?
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 11,004
- 4,745
I guess that's one of those 'to each their own' things, because all that sounds about as much fun to me as tanking BC heroics at release as a druid (who never trained Swipe). While a Marauder is like a slightly-more-squishy prot paladin, never having to think about aggro at all and laughing at the idea of CC'ing anything. Needless to say, I was a prot paladin in BC, and I found it horrifying to see the shit other tanks had to put up with when I did dungeons on my warlock alt, so I may be a bit biased.
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 18,127
- 6,926
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 11,004
- 4,745
It's gotta be. I had a lot of fun with frenetic tab target (or mouseover Devastate) tanking and was supremely bored with infinite unbreakable AoE threat locks.
I think I tend to have weird opinions on this stuff though. I simultaneously want to feel like I'm actually doing something where my choices matter, but I also don't really want my RPG to be an aim-to-target 1s GCD button mash. I have other games for that. For me, balancing threat on multiple targets through decision making while keeping a pretty respectable pace is just about perfect.
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 18,127
- 6,926
Not when your mage kept DCing mid pull. Either that or you waited until they nerfed the heroics...were trivial.*
*-Except when some asshat demanded a shot at his enchant.
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 11,004
- 4,745
Never needed a mage as a prot paladin, that was the whole point of my analogy. ^^Not when your mage kept DCing mid pull. Either that or you waited until they nerfed the heroics
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 18,127
- 6,926