Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Big_w_powah

Big_w_powah

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So what all do I have to buy, if I'm buying the game from scratch? I'm lost even looking at that.

And what classes would you recommend boosting? I tend to heal in most MMOs
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Kriptini said:
For starters, I would highly recommend buying the story skip and level boost-



Nevermind. You'll probably want to skip this game. Playing FFXIV below max level is 100% not worth it.
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What? This opinion is a minority opinion. This game is 100% journey, not destination
 
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Chris

Chris

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Big_w_powah said:
Is there a "I want to try this for the first time" guide? Assuming I dont want to buy skips or level boosts?
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Just do the Main Scenario Quest chain, (quest ! has gold fire around it), class quests and any ! with a + next to it (unlocks stuff).

Ignore regular side quests, they are for levelling alt jobs. This will save you a lot of time, you want to play for the awesome dungeons and raids, not the boring side quests.

If you outlevel the zone you are in, switch to another class. Other posters are reporting being able to level 2+ classes while levelling.

If you don't like your class, some that you can unlock later start at lv50 or 60 so you can just move across to that.
 
Folanlron

Folanlron

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Big_w_powah said:
Is there a "I want to try this for the first time" guide? Assuming I dont want to buy skips or level boosts?
Click to expand...


Follow the MSQ, enjoy the story(ARR is the hardest part of the whole thing, once you are in HW you'll get too see just how much SE learned), do you're class quest for you're job, at the start it will be a quest every 5lvls' till 50, and at 30 you'll unlock the advanced version of the job.

Don't buy skips I can understand them for alt's but for first timers? no
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Cybsled said:
What? This opinion is a minority opinion. This game is 100% journey, not destination
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There is no MMO while you're leveling. It's all single-player story content with the occasional dungeon with three random players (bots) that you barely interact with. The game doesn't become an MMORPG until you actually get to the point where you need to interact with people on a level beyond "Thanks for the dungeon!"
 
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Folanlron

Folanlron

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Malkav said:
The other was probably Ilya and his infamous Ilya strat for E8S.
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OMG that llya strat .. ya let's just have everyone walk thru the part of Light Protean Wave that hits the hardest. Guess the strat we use is called Alaya, (carry orbs outside the ribbon, makes adjusting for the waves much easier)
 
Chris

Chris

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Kriptini said:
There is no MMO while you're leveling. It's all single-player story content with the occasional dungeon with three random players (bots) that you barely interact with. The game doesn't become an MMORPG until you actually get to the point where you need to interact with people on a level beyond "Thanks for the dungeon!"
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Bots? What?
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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As my prior point, minority opinion. Ignore that shit. Why the fuck would you skip 10 years of content just to run shit like HoH or Bozja for 6 months until next xpac? Are you a Blizzard employee in disguise? Lol

As for what you need to buy, if you have never played, you can place base game and heavensward for free up to 60. Pretty sure the main SquareEnix FFXIV site has the link to download. Dunno how steam handles the trial
 
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Chris

Chris

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Cybsled said:
As my prior point, minority opinion. Ignore that shit. Why the fuck would you skip 10 years of content just to run shit like HoH or Bozja for 6 months until next xpac? Are you a Blizzard employee in disguise? Lol

As for what you need to buy, if you have never played, you can place base game and heavensward for free up to 60. Pretty sure the main SquareEnix FFXIV site has the link to download. Dunno how steam handles the trial
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Oh yeah that's a good point. Just play it for free and the Heavensward expansion is excellent. No need to spend money until you know it's for you.
 
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Neranja

Neranja

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Kriptini said:
It's all single-player story content with the occasional dungeon with three random players (bots) that you barely interact with.
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I think the game advertises itself primarily as a Final Fantasy game, and MMO second. That is literally the point.

Also, if that is the case, then there is no "MMO" in WoW during leveling and normal/heroic dungeons, either. It literally starts with M0, and for M+ you need to "optimize" your "score", so pickup groups of people know you don't suck and invite you.

I watched a Preach video recently where the sentiment was like "oh, you're not a real gamer, you don't skip the cutscenes"... and I'm like, wtf? What does that have to do with gaming? That is literally the "gotta go fast, grind that rep/anima/valor points/soul ash/stygia" attitude that is prevalent in the WoW community.

It's no wonder that there are people in the WoW playerbase that ask if WoW should scrap the leveling stage altogether. Yeah, go ahead and do that, and make WoW even more into a seasonal esports title. If you want such a game, go ahead and play WoW, but FFXIV isn't a game for you then.

EDIT: forgot "playerbase"
 
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nu_11

nu_11

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Big_w_powah said:
Is there a "I want to try this for the first time" guide? Assuming I dont want to buy skips or level boosts?
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Don’t listen to Kriptini. They guy is parroting his preferences as fact.

FFXIV is a heavily story-based MMO. Even the raiding progressions have a decent story line. Being that it’s developed by a Japanese company, expect there to be a lot of Japanese tropes. I personally don’t like the story that much but the overall package comes together that the world-building and jobs are good enough for me to bear it. Thus FFXIV is more about the journey and the experience.

I’m not saying that the raids are a cakewalk; they’re not easy but they also don’t require you to hold a second life.

if you’re still interested, the most difficult part is getting past the base game, A Realm Reborn, to the first expansion, Heavensward (which many people love). The game has a free trial up to level 60 (which includes ARR and Heavensward), so there’s no monetary commitment for you to fully experience Heavensward.

Sorry I have no recommendation on guides for first-timers. For leveling I wouldn’t stress too much on min-maxing thus no real need for a “guide.” Maybe you have questions about which job to start with? Personally I think FFXIV tanking is boring, FFXIV healing jobs are pretty fun in groups but boring in solo, Monk is probably not a good class for a first job.
 
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Morrow

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Folanlron said:
Follow the MSQ, enjoy the story(ARR is the hardest part of the whole thing, once you are in HW you'll get too see just how much SE learned), do you're class quest for you're job, at the start it will be a quest every 5lvls' till 50, and at 30 you'll unlock the advanced version of the job.

Don't buy skips I can understand them for alt's but for first timers? no
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Don't know how much longer I can push myself to do ARR. It is pure garbage. There have been like 2 good quests and 2 good pieces of story, and the rest is super monotonous and tedious and slow. Why does the MSQ involve SO MANY tedious tasks that don't matter? Please for the love of god let it be over soon so I can get to this good story/quests that everyone talks about...

I really can't get over how bad this first MSQ is... Doing menial shit and running back and forth all over the planet to deliver the dumbest messages. Then I have to do favors for a bar owner, and douse a drunk and deal with sylphs fapping about in the forest? it's super tedious and not interesting in the slightest. back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, almost like they're just deliberately trying to waste your time.

I was excited with the MSQ when it was the psychic shit and after seeing the Imperial cinematic, and I thought that was where this was headed.. but it's been quest after quest after quest of absolute fucking drivel.

They really need to tighten this shit up or let us skip it to get to the "good content" because this does not leave a good impression.

I can't even run higher dungeons, because I need to unlock them, and to unlock them I need to progress in the MSQ, which means doing the most tedious shit you can imagine. I see all these people say not to buy a level up because you miss a lot of important stuff. Well so far I'm not seeing it. I really hope the story gets back to shit that matters, and quick, because I'm tired of this filler.
 
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Yea they need to slice it by like 80 percent of fetches. Arr msq is kind of slow and repetitive. They could narrate some 9f the trivial plot points and it would stay relevant. The plot comes together nicely though and its the same actual storyline the whole way through.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Morrow said:
I can't even run higher dungeons, because I need to unlock them, and to unlock them I need to progress in the MSQ, which means doing the most tedious shit you can imagine. I see all these people say not to buy a level up because you miss a lot of important stuff. Well so far I'm not seeing it. I really hope the story gets back to shit that matters, and quick, because I'm tired of this filler.
Click to expand...

Level and story skips are different. Skipping levels still throttles your progress based on story.

Yes, ARR is a slog and even vets of the game agree they -really- need to trim a lot more of the tedium from ARR. It is a hard sell to say "play this game for 30 hours and then it gets good". I think their hands are somewhat tied because they would have to re-record all the VA in ARR to make major changes (the VA in ARR are different than the rest of the game mostly).

ARR story does get much better around 2.4. It is one of those things where people who havent beat all of ARR want to skip, but people who slog through it are glad they didn't skip.
 
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Its basically normal epic quest lines from the year it came out for an mmo. Sloggy. Not modern
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Pretty much. It was a product of its time. If you watch TNG season 1 vs. season 5 - 7, you notice a massive difference. Same here.
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Morrow said:
Don't know how much longer I can push myself to do ARR. It is pure garbage. There have been like 2 good quests and 2 good pieces of story, and the rest is super monotonous and tedious and slow. Why does the MSQ involve SO MANY tedious tasks that don't matter? Please for the love of god let it be over soon so I can get to this good story/quests that everyone talks about...

I really can't get over how bad this first MSQ is... Doing menial shit and running back and forth all over the planet to deliver the dumbest messages. Then I have to do favors for a bar owner, and douse a drunk and deal with sylphs fapping about in the forest? it's super tedious and not interesting in the slightest. back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, almost like they're just deliberately trying to waste your time.

I was excited with the MSQ when it was the psychic shit and after seeing the Imperial cinematic, and I thought that was where this was headed.. but it's been quest after quest after quest of absolute fucking drivel.

They really need to tighten this shit up or let us skip it to get to the "good content" because this does not leave a good impression.

I can't even run higher dungeons, because I need to unlock them, and to unlock them I need to progress in the MSQ, which means doing the most tedious shit you can imagine. I see all these people say not to buy a level up because you miss a lot of important stuff. Well so far I'm not seeing it. I really hope the story gets back to shit that matters, and quick, because I'm tired of this filler.
Click to expand...

It never really gets better lol. In the later expansions there are certainly less interlude quests than the ones between ARR and HW but you're going to be mostly experiencing the same mindless drivel over and over again. There is so much awful quest padding and forgettable moments in the story that it makes climaxes which would be mediocre by other game's standards seem INCREDIBLE and AMAZING! But the reality is that the game's slow burn only serves to lower your expectations for anything remotely interesting over time. People who play this game get Stockholm syndrome for the story. I would know, I was one of them (look at my damn avatar). But since I've stepped away from the game and had time to reflect on my experiences with it objectively, pretty much all of the single-player content (including the MSQs that people rave about) was weak to mediocre. My fond memories of the game come from playing with other people, in spite of how much effort the game puts in to keep you from getting to that point.
 
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Merrith

Merrith

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Kriptini might be the first person I've heard call the later high points as weak to mediocre, that's for sure. I don't need to re-echo anyone else, ARR can be a slog, that's a fact. It does have lore/world building in there though that gets paid off later on. And as someone else mentioned, at some point around ~2.4, the end of the ARR story actually gets pretty good for the lead up into Heavensward.

I do find it funny, though, just having watched some streamers play catch up through the MSQ in stuff like Heavensward and Stormblood how much stuff I didn't completely remember but that was very good and meant even more having seen the stuff I had after it.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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They are pretty good about tying back to earlier plot points. I had watched a streamer play through MSQ for first time and they picked up on certain elements of the crystal tower and they made some theorycrafting predictions, then it paid off many expansions later and they were blown away that they had stayed that consistent with the lore, even though in RL time the pay off was like 8+ years later.
 
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