Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Tarisk

Tarisk

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Threelions said:
View attachment 386925
Saw this somewhere earlier, apparently UPS dropping off a collectors edition to someone.
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That's awesome. the physical CE stuff looks pretty sweet.

That driver probably has it worse too at this time of year. He'll get home right as the login queue is at it's absolute worst, most likely, depending where that is.
 
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Springbok

Springbok

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Guess I'll grind stones now to boost my ilvl - one thing I noticed though, some of these trials and dungeon bosses are mechanically pretty tough/interesting when compared with previous content. Like, the amount of mechanics on some of these bosses is just crazy to me given the "tier" of content which bodes really well for future content. So great.
 
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Tarisk

Tarisk

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Springbok said:
Guess I'll grind stones now to boost my ilvl - one thing I noticed though, some of these trials and dungeon bosses are mechanically pretty tough/interesting when compared with previous content. Like, the amount of mechanics on some of these bosses is just crazy to me given the "tier" of content which bodes really well for future content. So great.
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I think that's one of my favorite things about the content. The mechanics aren't super crazy in the sense that one slip and it's game over, but they're all very learnable if you look for the signs and you feel personal progress as you learn them.

So you can start off floor tanking and having no idea wtf just killed you, then look back on it later and wonder how you screwed it up the first time.
 
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Grizzlebeard

Grizzlebeard

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Did they do away with Role Quests this expansion?

I thought I read they had them in but as all the new skills (read boosted existing skills) post 80 are gained automatically I wonder whether I just imagined it.

On that subject, level 90 title and job armour also?
 
Grizzlebeard

Grizzlebeard

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Tarisk said:
I think that's one of my favorite things about the content. The mechanics aren't super crazy in the sense that one slip and it's game over, but they're all very learnable if you look for the signs and you feel personal progress as you learn them.

So you can start off floor tanking and having no idea wtf just killed you, then look back on it later and wonder how you screwed it up the first time.
Click to expand...

I'm finding the Trusts are excellent teachers. Your buds intuitively know when and where the AOEs are going to land so you just learn to mimic them and spend the extra few seconds looking around to understand the mechanics.
 
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Valorath

Valorath

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Grizzlebeard said:
Did they do away with Role Quests this expansion?

I thought I read they had them in but as all the new skills (read boosted existing skills) post 80 are gained automatically I wonder whether I just imagined it.

On that subject, level 90 title and job armour also?
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Role quests unlock at level 85 in the MSQ. You can’t miss them, it takes you right to them and has a dialogue box to click through about them.
 
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Chris

Chris

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Grizzlebeard said:
Did they do away with Role Quests this expansion?

I thought I read they had them in but as all the new skills (read boosted existing skills) post 80 are gained automatically I wonder whether I just imagined it.

On that subject, level 90 title and job armour also?
Click to expand...
Lv85 role quests are pretty shit, I just skipped through more Gridania hippy elemental tree shit as a tank. The Shadowbringers ones were essentially part of the MSQ and of that quality.

It does unlock dying the lv90 job armour though which looks great and is just handed to you for free at lv89.

Lv90 title is "Endwalker".
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Grizzlebeard said:
Did they do away with Role Quests this expansion?

I thought I read they had them in but as all the new skills (read boosted existing skills) post 80 are gained automatically I wonder whether I just imagined it.

On that subject, level 90 title and job armour also?
Click to expand...
As mentionned, start at 85. Entirely optional as they only reward the ability to dye your AF job gear. There's titles for them but not for individual jobs sadly, which really sucks since titles don't really require any work. The story quality so far varies from "absolute trash tier" for the melee DPS one to "pretty alright" for healer/caster DPS. Haven't done tank/ranged DPS yet, but the ShB ones were a lot better imo.

Job armor this time around is obtained at 89, during the MSQ. Hard to miss, there's a MSQ about it, then the vendor is opened and you can just buy that shit even at 89(it'll be synced to 89 until you hit 90). That means 89 dungeon also only drops accessories like 90 dungeons. Makes it easier to keep leveling gear, since you can just do augmented cryptlurker > 85 gear > 87 gear then desynth everything else(even 89 accs are basically worthless since you can just use 87 for one level).
 
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Ehrgeix

Ehrgeix

Trakanon Raider
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Just done with Elpis progress report:

I really can't get over how bad the story is so far -- this dynamis shit is just like they had a kid do some fanfic and he's all like "OH YES, NEW MAGIC THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING". Also time travel, memory editing. A lot of disappointing bullshit.

edit: There's some likeable characters / ok dialogue, it's not all like completely terrible. Just... disappointing.
 
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Chris

Chris

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Ehrgeix said:
Just done with Elpis progress report:

I really can't get over how bad the story is so far -- this dynamis shit is just like they had a kid do some fanfic and he's all like "OH YES, NEW MAGIC THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING". Also time travel, memory editing. A lot of disappointing bullshit.

edit: There's some likeable characters / ok dialogue, it's not all like completely terrible. Just... disappointing.
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Dynamis is what powers limit breaks and all of our previous death defying anime antics. It's present throughout the expansion with the Elpis flower, Thavnarian alchemy and Terminus transformations.

I thought it was very well written and explained. They set up memory editing with the Sharlayan Forum plotline and the need for it in Elpis with Hermes' compassion causing him to reset memories of the experiments rather than reseting them via death.

Dynamis is similar to how gravity is weaker than electromagetism which ties into later scientific plot plots. It explains why the Final Days haven't been a problem for thousands of years since Zodiark was acting like an aetherial ozone layer, we were told that he rewrote the laws of physics to stop the Final Days in Shadowbringers, now we know the mechanism. Not sure if it's been explained to you what exactly the Final Days is caused by yet, but it all ties into this.

You'll see the power of Dynamis soon and it's pretty cool.
 
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D

Droigan

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I pretty much can't progress. I keep crashing in cut scenes. Mainly right after they are done and it tries to load in the world again. Anything from just the game closing to not being able to move after the scene then disconnecting.

Meh.
 
Janx

Janx

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1639106371445.png


What the fuck? Urianger use that thing as a fleshlight?
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Finally finished the MSQ. Really nice wrap up for the main story that started almost 10 years ago. Story spoilers - dont click if you haven't beaten the game or care at all about story spoilers.

The main plot went hard for the "Great Filter" hypothesis with a dash of Third Body Problem - I loved the 90 dungeon and Ultima Thule where you basically get to view different civilizations and learn how they came about their end - plague, basically making Skynet and being wiped out by AI, a super advanced immortal race realizing they cannot prevent the heat death of the universe and falling into despair, a race that set their goal to be the ultimate power and turning themselves into machines and then achieving that goal and unable to change their goal now due to becoming machines, after effects of a war causing terminal birth defects that results in an extinction, some enlightened race that loses all meaning due to utopia and literally creates a death mechanism to escape their now meaningless existence. Hermes creating a linked "AI" to find what brings meaning and happiness to the universe, but them only discovering death and dead civilizations that failed to pass the filter, and it driving them into madness, like some Lovecraftian plot. It was dark as fuck and I loved it. On a side note, they really should consider making the Omega raids potentially MSQ required. While you can still follow along if you haven't run them, it ties in pretty heavy to that story.

Traveling back in time I never expected - gave me major Chrono Trigger vibes, it felt very Kingdom of Zeal. On that note, I'm kind of confused on what their model for time travel is in this game. Alexander Raid and Endwalker almost seem to use a pre-destintation paradox model, but Shadowbringers seemed to use multiverse with Crystal Exarch altering time. It kind of annoyed me and I do wonder if they will ever address that. I suppose maybe they could use some Doctor Who "fixed point in time" explanation - you can alter time, except fixed points. Although the short story for Shadowbringers shows the future that Graha left still exists, just diverged from our altered timeline.

In any case, it felt like a satisfactory conclusion to the main story. I do wonder how they will handle future stories. I suspect they will be much shorter in scope to avoid ultra-epics, although I wonder if they will have multi-xpac spanning core stories that will still play a role.
 
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Pasteton

Pasteton

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Actually saw a Japanese translation and it’s actually very poignant about his history with her. Not sure why they kind of ruined it in the English text
 
Chris

Chris

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I've had a few days break from the game to think about this expansion.

Endwalker is the greatest story told an in MMO. I'm yet to see the raid but Eden in Shadowbringers is the best raid in an MMO. Some of the Endwalker dungeons are amoungst the best scripted sequences in an MMO. The structure of the content is the most any MMO has had availiable for you to do at once.

But this game has a deep, deep design flaw.

In Final Fantasy games you journey from point A to point B. Along the way there'll be random battles for you to experience the game and progress your characters. At point B there'll be a sequence of ingame dialogue, cut scenes and boss battles that usually reward no exp.

FF11 onwards replaced random battles with seeing enemies in the overworld, but since the overworld design often forced you into battles and nothing else gave exp, you did the battles.

Having battles break up dialogue/story sections was very important. FF14 thinks that it has this design because there are overworld enemies between dialogue sections. It doesn't.

Because overworld enemies give trivial exp, even side quests and fates have pretty anemic exp gains, because dialogue sections give massive exp, there is no incentive to do anything other than avoid everything and just move to the next dialogue section. So then you do millions of dialogue sections in a row.

When you are in Labyrinthos and it's all filler and subtle forshadowing, you aren't playing a game, you are in a boring semi interactive movie. It's the ARR model of gameplay and it's dogshit.

The final zone is amazing with the same gameplay model and it's because the story content and zone visuals are very interesting and drive you onto the next story point.

The best sequence is probably Thavnir visit 2 because it's action packed with forced battles and a sense of urgency to your exploration.

So... they need to totally rebalance to model of how exp is awarded and what content you can do underlevelled to slow people down and actually do stuff between dialogue sections.

They also need to prune the amount of dialogue and have you play through more plot points instead of listen to them. Don't get me wrong, there are a bunch of amazing plot points you play through (way more than WoW nowadays) and it's actually a strength of much of the game. But in zones like Labyrinthos you just listen to shit and do very little, that entire zone can fuck off.
 
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Malkav

Malkav

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I'd rather go from dialogue to dialogue than have to stop to kill 10 bears for their asses. No thank you.
 
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