Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Can't wait. The beta weekends were so good, but the wait between them was so difficult.

It was very nice to see Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar live gameplay in this video. Example here @ 1:50 on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkDVn-HcS0Y

I've got to ask , if they went the route of shutting down and redoing tons of the game , which I applaud them for btw , why in hell's name would be rushing to launch the new ARR now? When obviously they need a few more months to get the higher level content tested and ready and so on?

What massive mmo is about to launch between now and Nov that will risk grabbing their playerbase ?

None.

Just seems stupid to go through the effort of closing down for over a year or two and trying to get it right then launching rushed and not ready.

Because Japan has short-sighted bean counters that are allowed to make the decisions too, it's not just a western thing.

Dahkoht_sl said:

I've got to ask , if they went the route of shutting down and redoing tons of the game , which I applaud them for btw , why in hell's name would be rushing to launch the new ARR now? When obviously they need a few more months to get the higher level content tested and ready and so on?

What massive mmo is about to launch between now and Nov that will risk grabbing their playerbase ?

None.

Just seems stupid to go through the effort of closing down for over a year or two and trying to get it right then launching rushed and not ready.

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They probably have fucked up thinking along the lines of,

"This is a relaunched game. It can't compete against November's lineup of new games. We need to release early to get people hooked."

A really stupid and shortsighted analysis, but probably exactly what went on in talks about the game.

Maybe I missed something, but I don't understand where the fear of no endgame at launch is. Yeah there are some naysayers on the thread here who are speculating that because P4 is level 20 cap, that that must somehow mean there is no endgame (even though legacy players will get to be level 50 at P4). They said numerous times that there are 2 raids at launch AND primal fights. And we will have PVP at launch.

Q19: Please tell us what kind of bosses and mechanics are waiting for us in the Great Labyrinth of Bahamut and the Crystal Tower. Will primal equipment be necessary?

A19: As there are most likely newcomers watching, let me explain simply to start off. The Great Labyrinth of Bahamut will be the hardest content at the start of ARR for a while. It will contain a lot of things such as what happened after the Seventh Umbral event. While I can?t really say too much about the mechanics, there will bosses that can only be defeated by performing certain actions and that have different phases. Without having a party that can deal the proper amount of damage, you won?t be able to move past certain phases. Additionally, there will be shared damage type of attacks that you will need to have 4 people get hit by, as well as have a certain character act as a channeler for the damage. There will be a lot of different elements present.

The Crystal Tower is content that can be undertaken by a 24 person party. I don?t think that difficulty is really that hard, and we?ve adjusted it so it?s something that can be enjoyed by everyone.

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Q18: Will the primal battles be the same as what they were in 1.0?

A18: There are slight changes (some of the elements are moved around, introduced a variety of visual notifications, etc.) made to the primal battles. Even the 1.0 players will be surprised of the changes. Please stay tuned!

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Q21: Will we be able to fight the primal ?Good King Moggle Mog XII? in ARR?

A21: ?Good King Moggle Mog XII? will be introduced in patch 2.1. Oh, on a side note, we plan to implement ?extreme? versions of all the primals!

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Q31: In addition to primal battles, will you also be implementing hard-mode for instanced dungeons?

A31: Yes, we will.

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Just because they don't want people to rush to max level in P4 during open beta (which is essentially a free TRIAL, and not a new thing to MMO's to limit access to content during open betas) doesn't mean that there "omgz iz no engame". Relax and let launch play out. You can come back here and complain all you want if there is no endgame, but I assure you it is there and will be there at launch. And according to their comments there is going to be a good mix of easier and harder content. So no worries about everything being too easy there either.

Basically a MMO is never complete... and every single MMO figures end game content isn't a priority. They let the 1% of the player base be the guinea pigs for end game. Dunno why I just stated the obvious but whatever, it'll never change. So long as they have 2 raid zones, they're ahead of the curve, balanced or not.

Highly doubt they don't have most of the sub 40 content completed. And 40-50 content isn't all that necessary for the hard core as they only spend a day or 2 on it, and it'll probably be ready when the majority of the playerbase gets there.

Stave_sl said:

Maybe I missed something, but I don't understand where the fear of no endgame at launch is.

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- Crystal Tower is 24 man raid content
- the content is a bit hard but we also want to open it to Duty Finder and pick up a group
- for this reason its moved back to patch 2.1 scheduled for after launch
- this will give players time to get good gear in preparation for Crystal Tower around 3-4 months

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^ is what people are in an uproar about. Justifiably so, if that translation is accurate.

isnt crystal tower the opening raid with behemoth raid the one after?

That just makes me think that they don't want to spend time balancing it and are focusing on finishing the 8-man. It's good that people are in an uproar about it though. Hopefully there's at least one raid for guilds beyond that of pugs. If behemoth is that, then good.

Yeah there will be 2 tiers to start with, along with multiple primal fights. WoW had what, Molten Core, and Onyxia at launch? This will be like having MC, BWL, and 3+ Onyxia type fights at launch (Primals).

I'm scared itemization is going to be boring and nothing to be excited about. IE level 5 staff - 5 dmg with 2 spell damage 2 healing, level 10 staff - 6 dmg with 3 spell damage 3 healing and so on. I was excited for this game at one point but its dissipating quickly.

Im still excited since its something new. Ive never done raids in a FF game so looking forward to completing them.

Thraka_sl said:

I'm scared itemization is going to be boring and nothing to be excited about. IE level 5 staff - 5 dmg with 2 spell damage 2 healing, level 10 staff - 6 dmg with 3 spell damage 3 healing and so on. I was excited for this game at one point but its dissipating quickly.

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I'm not gonna lie, it does do a lot of things that standard MMO's do, but it does them as well or better it seems. Itemization may be boring, but there are plenty of non-boring things, like the epic story lines, etc. My best comparison was calling it WoW 1.5. It isn't trying to fundamentally change the genre like EQ Next is, but what it boils down to, is it is a well polished, fun game, with a good Final Fantasy type story, and lots of stuff like class stories, multi-classing, housing, etc, and all the multitude of changes/improvements from games like WoW, that make it worthwhile. It isn't flawed like SWToR was from the get go, etc. If you liked WoW at any point in time, even if you hate it now, you will probably enjoy this game, even for a few months. If you enjoyed FFXI, you will also enjoy this game. I'm tired of WoW myself and still enjoy FFXIV a lot. There are enough improvements to make it worth at least checking out in free open beta. And you can get the game for like $20 bucks with a free month. If you get a couple months of fun, and vest $32 bucks for 2 months and box, that's still cheaper than a full price PC/Console game, that you will probably burn through in a week or 2.

And if the dev's produce even half of what they promise, it will still be an entertaining game for quite a while. Besides. What are your other options right now? Go back to WoW? Wildstar and ESO are both going to be big budget flops and they are ways off yet too.

I'm pretty excited for the game, I actually liked the initial launch up to around lvl 15. So long as the raids aren't all ridiculously easy, I'll probably play for a couple years at least (monk job being the sole reason possibly). Kinda surprised this forum doesn't talk about this game as much as EQ Next given how much SOE should've convinced everyone by now that they have no idea how to make a MMO. Sure EQ is a big name, but it wasn't a SOE product.

So any advice for a new player to ARR / FF in general?

Since I'll going down the Pugilist / Monk route, I thought about taking up Goldsmithing / Leatherworking / Mining to craft gear, but will that gear be worthwhile?

Also, default female Roegadyn look a lot like Yara Greyjoy from GoT.

probably same as the betas, japan.