Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

AladainAF

Best Rabbit
<Gold Donor>
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Yeah I hear that. I'll give them a call in the morning and find out what's up. Hopefully they can simply remove it from the account and I can re-add it with my phone. It sucks too because all this "Emergency Removal Password" shit for them, I never got any info on that and they need me to have it to do it automated, but I never set one up. So yeah, I appreciate all the security on the account, but am pretty pissed off about the HW token giving the wrong code out.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Patch 3.4 Notes (Full Release) | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

- The required materials to craft glamour prisms has been adjusted. (Only a single grade)
- New gear is now available for Disciples of the Hand and Disciples of the Land from the NPC Grinmox in Idyllshire (X:6.6 Y:7.4). (i200 red offhands and jewelry)
- The type and number of items required when exchanging for the following at the Splendors Vendor NPC in Idyllshire (X:5.7 Y:7.1) has changed: (Blue scrips for offhands and jewelry)
- New rare items can now be obtained from quick exploration ventures.
- Rav EX weapons
- Thordain EX weapons

Crafting may have two bottlenecks:
- Demicrystals (unknown source, used for weapons)
- Grade 3 Dissolvents (Possibly ALC spec required, like fibers)
 
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Lawrs_EQ2

N00b
33
4
Do they still have a global cooldown of like three fucking seconds and such primitive skills and character build mechanics that it frankly belongs in the DAoC era? When I tried this game at launch, I couldn't get over how much it felt like playing a decade old MMO.

This is my main complaint with the game (I have only got to like level 36 or something). I just can't get past the GCD. The game looks awesome and has a ton of fun things to do. Plus, I am a huge FF fan. But my brain just can't handle the glacier speed of combat. I guess this is how growing up on FPSs can be a bad thing (and EQ2 with its 0.25 GCD) :(
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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They chose that timing for more than GCDs, 2.5 seconds per in-game minute means 150 seconds per hour (2.5 minutes) which ends up making an in-game day exactly an hour of real time.

Although if they don't change anything for 4.0 we will start getting into ridiculous spell and skill speed stats to reduce it to 1.5 or below.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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That didn't happen for Heavensward because just like wow they rework the formulas as you level up, so while you might have twice as much haste/spell speed, you actually get the same speed. Also forces you to replace your old gear since the ratings you had on your old shit become complete garbage with the new formula at the new cap.

The GCD is a bit weird, it's really jarring at first and especially at low level, but as you get a fuckton more skills to rotate it becomes less of an issue I think. It's still way slower paced than pretty much any other mmos, but I kinda liked the slower pace when you play a lot of hours like I tend to do. But yeah it's very much a hit or miss thing, some people won't like the combat in this at all since in many ways it plays like BC WoW with slower GCD. Combat is definitely not where the game shines, it's basic and serviceable but not great and there's some typical asian mmo issues with ping related business cause it's designed for sub 50ping like they have in most of japan and korea. Ninja mantras or chaining off GCD abilities is pretty painful as your ping increases. I liked encounter design, class design(especially Scholar) and then all the art and non combat stuff like the side quests, the minigames, the crafting, the exploration shit etc.
 

Asmadai

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3,024
8,499
Yeah, last time I had to call in to remove my token it was painless - I got someone who shockingly played the game he works for; he completely understood that people upgrade phones and forget to remove the token, and easily took it off my account. All in all around 5 minutes total from dialing to solution. I was actually impressed at the time.

And to the GCD discussion, I mean it's really not that much slower than other MMOs - we're talking 2.5 seconds to most other games 1.5 seconds - a 1 second difference. And as mentioned in this thread already, once you start having to mix in other cooldowns between the GCD down the road, it becomes negligible. It does suck at lower levels, when you only have a handful of abilities and absolutely no skill speed/spell speed, but just struggle through it - it gets better.

Plus, it does go deeper than that as Malakriss Malakriss mentioned. As a Monk for example, you could go full retard and stack ridiculous amounts of skill speed if you want, but you are advised against it, as too much speed leads to TP management problems; i've seen this first hand (I main a Monk). If the GCD was any faster, mixed with Greased Lightning speed...shit, i'd spend the majority of most boss fights begging for a Goad or just standing around with my dick in my hands.
 

dvoraen

Lord Nagafen Raider
515
181
Yeah, last time I had to call in to remove my token it was painless - I got someone who shockingly played the game he works for; he completely understood that people upgrade phones and forget to remove the token, and easily took it off my account. All in all around 5 minutes total from dialing to solution. I was actually impressed at the time.

And to the GCD discussion, I mean it's really not that much slower than other MMOs - we're talking 2.5 seconds to most other games 1.5 seconds - a 1 second difference. And as mentioned in this thread already, once you start having to mix in other cooldowns between the GCD down the road, it becomes negligible. It does suck at lower levels, when you only have a handful of abilities and absolutely no skill speed/spell speed, but just struggle through it - it gets better.

Plus, it does go deeper than that as Malakriss Malakriss mentioned. As a Monk for example, you could go full retard and stack ridiculous amounts of skill speed if you want, but you are advised against it, as too much speed leads to TP management problems; i've seen this first hand (I main a Monk). If the GCD was any faster, mixed with Greased Lightning speed...shit, i'd spend the majority of most boss fights begging for a Goad or just standing around with my dick in my hands.
I'm still completely blown away by the fact they buffed Balance to Raging Strikes level. o_O

RE: bolded/TP management -> This is why I think they should just bite the bullet and give AST cards two effects:

- Balance: 10% damage, +5-10% crit chance
- Spire: TP regen, -20?% TP cost (the 3.0 effect it had is added on)
- Ewer: Same as Spire but MP.
- Bole: Damage mitigation and <insert avoiding death idea here>
- Arrow: 15% haste and gains Spear's effect also
- Spear: Revamp -> Target receives X% additional healing, +% chance to critically heal target (HI SCHOLARS)

So Arrow is "everything is faster" and Spear basically becomes a mini(?) Divine Seal, to compensate for the fact Synastry is 90s and requires a living target to bond with.
 
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Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Stat minimums for crafting / gathering appear to require melded tools already.

Crafting: 995 / 955
Gathering 860 / ??? (bonuses up to 930g)
 

TrollfaceDeux

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Bronze Donator>
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In your opinion, did the game improve after the patch? I played nonstop for 3 days and blanked out (mainly because I reached level 60 and completed main quest).
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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They updated the carrots on the treadmill. On Gilgamesh the gathering market is absurdly oversaturated so the only ones who can capitalize are the crafters with penta-melds. POTD got some accursed chests, wonderous tails will make people do old queues, new triad cards to collect, but the end of the day this patch is still the +30 ilevel regrind.
 

nu_11

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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19,957
I just resubscribed since early ARR released. I finished the release ARR main scenario quest and was raiding up to Twintania

Where the heck do I go to move the story forward?
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Well the story almost always has you run back and forth between Vesper Bay and Revenant's Toll, so check there first.
 

Dragonaut

Molten Core Raider
41
47
You're going to have to give a better definition of "primitive skills."

When I played (before any expansions; this is why I'm asking if it's still like this), skills were just so simple. Almost everything was completely one-dimensional. The majority of my character's skills had the complexity of vanilla WoW's Heroic Strike. There was nothing to think about. For a modern MMORPG, the abilities just didn't have enough depth and detail. Also, character build choices were a joke. Pick a secondary class and pick three from amongst their worst skills. Usually there weren't even three that would benefit your class. As a warrior, my secondary class comprised like 1% of my character's substance and I was essentially identical to all other warriors with nothing I could realistically choose to change my playstyle or performance. This was also compounded by the fact that each tier of gear had one item per slot. Every warrior in my guild was 100% identical, and the skills were so primitive that performance was the same as well.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Square doing their part to reduce lalafells, Chinese dresses were released and they look much better on the normal races. Bad news: $18 USD