Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Merrith

Merrith

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Kriptini said:
There was nothing fun about Eureka, ever. No purpose to exploration, no incentive to form small groups and kill mobs, no amount of thought required whatsoever - just bot up and kill NMs in the train. The arsenal dungeon sounded interesting but I was not willing to suffer through the hours upon hours of Eureka required to unlock it.
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Granted I got to Eureka a little later in SB, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Yes, it's a NM train and it's kind of very repetitive but having intelligent people spawning stuff around weather conditions and basically running a whole zone was actually a bit fun when you had competent people willing to put in a little work. I will admit, maybe they could have made it more solo friendly for some? I generally had a duo partner most of the time so we at least had heals which were kind of important, although RDM was just so OP for Eureka in general.

Also thought each zone was gorgeous, and I liked the idea of the elemental level system. Travel was a bit of a hassle until you could mount in each area, but that was sort of the point at first.

BA was a lot of fun to actually do, and I liked the separate actions and buffs they came up with for Pyros and Hydatos. I assume that was testing for similar stuff we might see in this next relic zone areas, but we'll see.

Dunno, all in all, I enjoyed Eureka as a break from the norm. It absolutely was a grind in some spots, and they could have made leveling/etc far less reliant on just NM train grind...but I still enjoyed the experience.
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Merrith said:
Yes, it's a NM train and it's kind of very repetitive but having intelligent people spawning stuff around weather conditions and basically running a whole zone was actually a bit fun when you had competent people willing to put in a little work.
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Maybe it's more fun if you're one of the people doing that, but if you're a lowbie just trying to get EXP, you're either mindlessly grinding mobs for hours upon hours or mindlessly autofollowing the NM train for hours upon hours. In both situations there is no brain input required and nothing exciting happens. No variations to the environment*,
no need to change tactics for anything, no real effort required beyond changing your elemental affinity and making sure you don't pull too many mobs.

*What I mean by this comment is, let's say you're grinding EXP in an old-school dungeon crawl sort of scenario. Depending on the room, the way you pull mobs might be different. If you have a big open room, maybe you pull mobs on the sides first, or look for roamers to grab so they don't aggro during another pull. Maybe you have a room with multiple elevations that you have to traverse, little things to keep the grind interesting. But Eureka has none of that. It's just "here's an open area with a mob camp" and "here's another open area with a mob camp." No variety to anything and no incentive to go hunt another type of mob aside from the weekly challenges.
 
Merrith

Merrith

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Kriptini said:
Maybe it's more fun if you're one of the people doing that, but if you're a lowbie just trying to get EXP, you're either mindlessly grinding mobs for hours upon hours or mindlessly autofollowing the NM train for hours upon hours. In both situations there is no brain input required and nothing exciting happens. No variations to the environment*,
no need to change tactics for anything, no real effort required beyond changing your elemental affinity and making sure you don't pull too many mobs.

*What I mean by this comment is, let's say you're grinding EXP in an old-school dungeon crawl sort of scenario. Depending on the room, the way you pull mobs might be different. If you have a big open room, maybe you pull mobs on the sides first, or look for roamers to grab so they don't aggro during another pull. Maybe you have a room with multiple elevations that you have to traverse, little things to keep the grind interesting. But Eureka has none of that. It's just "here's an open area with a mob camp" and "here's another open area with a mob camp." No variety to anything and no incentive to go hunt another type of mob aside from the weekly challenges.
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It has some of that, but in different ways. Obviously when you're a lowbie in each zone, it's a little different (especially certain zones like Pagos where travel and unlocking the other port locations isn't possible at the real low levels. But while I was running with the NM train I was learning the different mobs to kill to spawn stuff, what order the train liked to spawn things. Which spawns you left when certain weather conditions were up, etc.

Now if you're just like "fuck it I just want levels so I can keep moving up", I can see how it would be mindless and boring.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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moonarchia said:
I didn't see anything about Hildebrand in there. Fuck this!
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They had already said there was no new Hildibrande in 5.3. Might come later but not sure, I don't think they've said there would be a version in 5.x, although I guess they would at least do a little one in 5.5 eventually.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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There's a lot they could do with the First as well. You could have an Evil or Doppleganger Hildibrand and Nashu there, for instance.
 
Grizzlebeard

Grizzlebeard

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I did my first Copied Factory over the weekend. I lost count of the number of deaths. In hindsight running it on AST on PS4 (w/keyboard) was always going to be a headache.

Tried watching MTQ for the walkthrough but made it halfway through the second boss and decided this wasn't something I could commit to memory and would just have to learn by repeated pain.

Aside from that, clearing all the old raids I missed over the last few years has been fun. All the Alexander's, Orbonne chain, Void Ark, etc. Just Dun Scaith left I think.

Pretty sure I'll never be up for Savage content but I can hold my own up to Extreme usually so that'll have to suffice.
 
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Pyros

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The nier raid is mechanically fairly simple, but relies mostly on seeing known patterns and reacting to them, so guides are kinda not needed, other than figuring out which add you should kill if there's no marker(but sticking to your party does the job fine). 24man really aren't the kind of content you need to watch guides for usually, and any tougher bosses people will explain the funky mechanics(like the beast in world of darkness or standing on the things for thunder god). Also most things don't kill you in one hit anyway so you have time to learn.

2nd one might be harder but we'll see I guess.
 
Malkav

Malkav

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Pyros said:
The nier raid is mechanically fairly simple, but relies mostly on seeing known patterns and reacting to them, so guides are kinda not needed, other than figuring out which add you should kill if there's no marker(but sticking to your party does the job fine). 24man really aren't the kind of content you need to watch guides for usually, and any tougher bosses people will explain the funky mechanics(like the beast in world of darkness or standing on the things for thunder god). Also most things don't kill you in one hit anyway so you have time to learn.

2nd one might be harder but we'll see I guess.
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I feel like there were 2 bosses that could be unforgiving in alliance raids while they were current :
- Ozma : dropping adds correctly, and for some reasons people would fuck up the "stop doing anything" mechanic. Then again, I don't think the dice marker for the second mechanic existed back in HW.
- Thunder God : Dropping pools correctly and the split zones where you had to stack a different number of people.

At the time, fucking up any of these could mean the alliance dying pretty fast, which would fuck up other alliances and end in an overall wipe.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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There's a few more but some of these can be bad yeah. Thunder God isn't even an issue with just killing your own alliance, that stuff hits raid wide, so you basically instantly kill everyone if you fuck up too much, although it tends to be several ppl fucking up that's an issue(only need 3people per circle and 2circles per party so you have room for 2 retards, same for bleeds only 2ppl marked per party and as long as you don't get 2+ total for the raid you can heal through it).

The most common other ones are last boss of laby, any group not stepping on their platforms so everyone dies, in syrcus people breaking all the ice blocks with toads(2nd boss also has instant wipe but with the gear people have nowadays you never need to do any mechanics on this one), world of darkness not doing the dog stuff can lead to a wipe if DPS is low and meteors on last boss, I forgot which HW raid it is but the demon one with fire/water ground markers and newbies walking on the wrong ones result in an instant wipe.

Might be a couple more but generally 24man are very forgiving and the first Nier one is especially forgiving, even fucking up mechanics you'll survive(or die on your own), and the fights are really long so you get to see most of the mechanics twice, which is a nice way to learn. Feels pretty boring after a few runs though with how long they take.

They're just casual catchup dungeons so it makes sense though. Orbonne was pretty challenging at the time but it was the last one so it makes sense.
 
Malkav

Malkav

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Pyros said:
There's a few more but some of these can be bad yeah. Thunder God isn't even an issue with just killing your own alliance, that stuff hits raid wide, so you basically instantly kill everyone if you fuck up too much, although it tends to be several ppl fucking up that's an issue(only need 3people per circle and 2circles per party so you have room for 2 retards, same for bleeds only 2ppl marked per party and as long as you don't get 2+ total for the raid you can heal through it).

The most common other ones are last boss of laby, any group not stepping on their platforms so everyone dies, in syrcus people breaking all the ice blocks with toads(2nd boss also has instant wipe but with the gear people have nowadays you never need to do any mechanics on this one), world of darkness not doing the dog stuff can lead to a wipe if DPS is low and meteors on last boss, I forgot which HW raid it is but the demon one with fire/water ground markers and newbies walking on the wrong ones result in an instant wipe.

Might be a couple more but generally 24man are very forgiving and the first Nier one is especially forgiving, even fucking up mechanics you'll survive(or die on your own), and the fights are really long so you get to see most of the mechanics twice, which is a nice way to learn. Feels pretty boring after a few runs though with how long they take.

They're just casual catchup dungeons so it makes sense though. Orbonne was pretty challenging at the time but it was the last one so it makes sense.
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Oh god yeah, Thanatos or whatever in Laby. You know it's not the actual mechanic that kills people most of the time (because it's dumb as fuck), but the greed. Never ever think you can finish burning the boss before it ends the cast, because half the raid will do the mechanic anyway and you'll end up with too low dps to burn it in time.

I still get a chuckle when I think that Orbonne is the first alliance raid they had to nerf AND add Echo in. Usually overgearing takes care of that, but people were still too retarded to do TG properly.

Oh, also, if you do weekly current alliance raid, try and get it done soon after reset. Nothing worse than current alliance in raid on Sunday when all the retards are on.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Contains a lot of spoilers as with all trailers.

The flying in ARR zones seems better than I expected, they didn't just wall off every non walkable part but instead kinda reworked the zones so you can fly more or less properly. The example they used was Northern La Noscea, you can cross Bronze Lake directly instead of taking the ferry.


Big change for new players: Trial now includes all of ARR and Heavensward(60 content) and the starter edition(base game) now also includes HW as a result.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Ya, a couple scenes are def big spoiler, even if we don’t have full context.

Gra’tia potentially getting murdered by fake Ardbro and fight vs Eldibus like we fought Emet?

They said this wraps up most of the zodiark vs hydalin stuff, so I suspect the Acians are wiped out and we get some resolution re: the ancients and the WoL’s true identity
 
Daidraco

Daidraco

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I havent since original Shadowbringers release - but I'll be coming back for 8.3. Flying in old world zones will make trades less painful to level up and I'm sure I'll appreciate that most of all.

The story, if it concludes here.. I just dont know where its going to go now? The big thing that seemed to be pushed with this expansion in all the different shards (worlds) and that there are plenty left out of all the different elements. I wonder if thats the direction, or has there been more hinted at that I just didnt notice/pay attention to?
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Sounds like focus shifts back to Garlemond civil war. I’m guessing the expansion concludes with some major upheaval in that regard and next expac we are in Garlemond mostly.

You’ll have Gauis as the “good side” is the logical conclusion, but they haven’t been afraid to mix shit up in the past. Zenos will be doing his own shit and I suspect it will be the main trigger for next expac (even if Zenos himself dies, but I suspect he will start collecting soul fragments to match the WoL’s power).
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Daidraco said:
I havent since original Shadowbringers release - but I'll be coming back for 8.3. Flying in old world zones will make trades less painful to level up and I'm sure I'll appreciate that most of all.

The story, if it concludes here.. I just dont know where its going to go now? The big thing that seemed to be pushed with this expansion in all the different shards (worlds) and that there are plenty left out of all the different elements. I wonder if thats the direction, or has there been more hinted at that I just didnt notice/pay attention to?
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The current threads will end, but the overarching story is still not done until 6.0. They'll be hinting at what's next anyway at the end of this.
 
dvoraen

dvoraen

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Cybsled said:
Sounds like focus shifts back to Garlemond civil war. I’m guessing the expansion concludes with some major upheaval in that regard and next expac we are in Garlemond mostly.

You’ll have Gauis as the “good side” is the logical conclusion, but they haven’t been afraid to mix shit up in the past. Zenos will be doing his own shit and I suspect it will be the main trigger for next expac (even if Zenos himself dies, but I suspect he will start collecting soul fragments to match the WoL’s power).
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I figured Zenos has been slurping up souls all this time (since he received his artificial Echo) and that's why he was able to overpower even Elidibus in Zenos's body. It's why I think he's going to try and take down Hydaelyn and Zodiark and install himself as this nihilistic deity who is the boss of 6.0 (looking at Necron).
 
Merrith

Merrith

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Cybsled said:
Ya, a couple scenes are def big spoiler, even if we don’t have full context.

Gra’tia potentially getting murdered by fake Ardbro and fight vs Eldibus like we fought Emet?

They said this wraps up most of the zodiark vs hydalin stuff, so I suspect the Acians are wiped out and we get some resolution re: the ancients and the WoL’s true identity
Click to expand...

Those could be purposely trying to fake us out, though. We'll see. I don't know if they can tie up all of the Zodiark/Hydalyn stuff in this one patch, maybe they mean all of the backstory that led to both of their creations and which Ascian's soul the WoL is a piece of. Shit looks good, though. They'll leave some meat on the bone for 6.0 for sure.
 
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