Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Having both done wow heroics and Alex savage, the comparison isn't sensible.
Alex savage floor 1 may not be a wow-muru but its definitely not a wow heroic either. Can't comment on the later floors but from how few have cleared it is definitely not trivial. Obviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week) but before then it just looks stupid calling it easy.

Have they made any mention of any new 24 man raids? As brainless as CT was it i did enjoy it for some strange reason. Except LotA, fuck that place.

Saban_sl said:

Have they made any mention of any new 24 man raids? As brainless as CT was it i did enjoy it for some strange reason. Except LotA, fuck that place.

Click to expand...

I heard a rumor that it's coming in 3.1.

TecKnoe_sl said:

No, ningai told me 800 dps for a summoner was good(fresh 60 with ilvl 145 gear from vendors), go pop a xanax bro you seem mad that i find this game easier than WoWs raiding, do you even raid? or just RP with your guild and host corny costume events? because you sound like the type of guy who dosent actually play the game, its your life, your hangout you live through everyone else, you dont actually do content, just play dress up.

Ive been playing pretty much just since the expansion so for not having played and raided on a summoner since the game was released perfecting a rotation, im satisfied with my dps on both =] Sorry you feel the content is challenging and rewarding for slow chocobo i know dragging adds to lazers and figuring out what corner to run to is a challenge i get it, you're bad.

You know a game is casual when you get banned for just mentioning using a parser, clearly to protect people like you from being publicly shunned.

Click to expand...

Post your kill pic or shut the fuck up.

Xalara_sl said:

Isn't that pretty much every MMO ever? At least with FFXIV I know there will be a steady stream of updates that have new content.

Click to expand...

You're absolutely right. When I was a bit younger, I could put up with more shit like this, because the amount of things that actually mattered in my life outside of gaming were very minimal and trivial to say the least. Not to mention, the amount of quality gaming material was limited at best. Now it's always time and money vs quality of content being consumed. Am I getting my money's worth? Could I be doing something more enjoyable, or useful? There are so many games out right now, I could literally play one a month for the next five years and never run out of new MMOs. I feel like every time I spend money on FFXIV, it is money well spent. At least up to a certain point. Which seems to be exactly 2 months for me. It's unfortunate that the game feels completely predictable to me at all times, and this is a huge reason that my interest fades off so quickly. Another being the fact that the combat and rotations drive me nuts. It's not that they are challenging as much as being redundant, clunky, and a bit on the boring side, but that is my opinion, and I don't want to start a debate over it because I know some people enjoy the combat in this game. I don't fucking understand them, but their opinion is valid like any other. As an avid PvPer, I would possibly PvP, but it feels like such an afterthought in this game I can't even be bothered to run it for glamours, which I think is why the majority of people even queue up for it. In earlier games, WoW included, I would play the PvP maps/areas for hours on end, and not because of items, but because it was fun for me. PvP in FFXiV was never really fun to me, but became unbearable about the time they removed cleric stance from healers. Recently, every time I enter on a healer, there's always a dragoon or melee class pre-loaded with a one-hit-kill LB, and again the combat is fucking atrocious to me.

Raiding in this game is not something I'll ever be interested in, to be honest. I have the time, and I have the 'skill' (ability to learn, hit the same fucking buttons a million times, and have a connection to the Internet, dodge circles and cones on the ground, hit more buttons) but let's be honest, I'd rather do something else with my couple of hours. I look at the people standing next to the MBs, right in the busy areas with their weapons drawn to show off their gear, and my heart sinks. This is what I want to do with my time? Get gear so I can AFK in a fucking town, weapon drawn, so people will see my character with the same weapon every other person, or every third/fourth person has? Moving on. The world is a fucking joke. I don't know/remember where half the dungeons are, or which zones connect to which. AFAIK the world is all just a big collection of instanced zones that are scattered about in some weird fashion, some of them slightly matching in looks. Yes, I'm aware that they used to be seamless, and they ran into issues. I don't give a fuck, it's 2015, and I don't need to hear excuses about how it bogged their servers down or some shit. New questing zones from the expansion which were filled with people, now have nada, even on the busiest servers. People are sitting in town, or their FC's house waiting for the next queue to pop. The same instant travel bullshit I've been bitching about for years has completely trivialized the world for me, but that's alright, because everything has to be convenient these days. It's great that we can do everything in these games right away now, because I can also get bored of the game that much quicker, move on, and save my money. Unfortunately, the amount of things worth spending my money on have been in steady decline recently. MMORPG retirement home, here I come.

Also, with all that said, I still love the game. I love the music, and I love the primal fights. The story is pretty interesting sometimes(lately mostly), and the cutscenes are sometimes great. Many of the dungeons have been beautiful and fun the first time through, and sometimes multiple times through. The constant updates, hotfixes and community attention are world class. Quality of some updates, debatable. Interesting shit like the gold saucer, some of the crazy quests, and such keep me happy from time to time. The thing about all these things that I enjoy, however, is the fact that they can be consumed, over-consumed, and more consumed within a month or less, easily. Gear grinds be damned, I ain't into that shit. Sitting here with my dailies finished, leveling an alt class I don't even care to play because every class I like is level 60. Am I getting my money's worth now? Nah.

Woops, thought that was a couple of sentences.

Saban_sl said:

Have they made any mention of any new 24 man raids? As brainless as CT was it i did enjoy it for some strange reason. Except LotA, fuck that place.

Click to expand...

It's a Floating Continent with the Warring Triad at the end (holy shit they look cool AND exactly like the 2D spites by the way). Expect FF6 references!

AladainAF_sl said:

I wonder why we kept playing EQ so long, I guess it was the steady stream of neverending advancement with AAs.

Click to expand...

In my case, it may have had something to do with not having a huge Steam backlog at the time.

Pasteton_sl said:

Obviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week) but before then it just looks stupid calling it easy.

Click to expand...

So gearchecks are the standardized measure for "difficulty" in a game? So the hardest content in the world would simply be a fight that requires 75,000 hours of grinding x to get weapon-for-boss-01 even if you just frolic in and 1shot it once you get the weapon? Cause you know... before you grind that weapon it's "hard".

ZombieWizardhawk_sl said:

So gearchecks are the standardized measure for "difficulty" in a game? So the hardest content in the world would simply be a fight that requires 75,000 hours of grinding x to get weapon-for-boss-01 even if you just frolic in and 1shot it once you get the weapon? Cause you know... before you grind that weapon it's "hard".

Click to expand...

Getting befter gear will only help people meet the enrage. The mechanics of the bosses are still quite difficult. You could take eight random level 60s into T9 (a level 50 raid) and they probably wouldn't be able to clear it.

I wouldn't call any mechanic in FF14 difficult other than maybe the original Twister mechanic in T5 that only BlueGartr defeated. The game engine is simply too laggy/unresponsive to make things overly complex. There really is no reason for a group to ever wipe on a boss that they have beaten before because almost every raid is more of a puzzle rather than an execution challenge.

The game is at its best when the mechanics are very clear-cut and punishing such as Titan EX and T7. The first two encounters this current tier are baseline competency checks and third has multiple hard gear checks. Calling any of it hard really diminishes the meaning of the word.

Naj_sl said:

I wouldn't call any mechanic in FF14 difficult other than maybe the original Twister mechanic in T5 that only BlueGartr defeated.

Click to expand...

Uh, that mechanic was only difficult because of the lag from the launch of the game. Once it was fixed, Twisters became much easier. You can't say fights like T9, T2 (non-enrage), and savage T8 don't have hard mechanics.

Also, the ENTIRETY of FCoB was an execution challenge. T12 and especially T13 bad extremely tight enrages on launch. While their mechanics weren't as tough as T9 (which is an execution challenge if I've ever seen one), you still had to maximize your DPS while performing the mechanics flawlessly. A1Savage is the same thing as well.

The original twister predicted the player's movement and you had to 'juke' it last second. Modern twister is placed behind you so you only have to move. The engine lag (which is still god-awful, 12-13 frames to active a spell and >30 to cancel) had nothing to do with it, it's just the community as a whole didn't understand the (pre-nerf) mechanic.

And really, you mention T2 as a fight with hard mechanics? You needed two people who could alternate interrupts on a 2 second cast and you ran a hot-potato chain once and then stacked together so the mechanic would handle itself as immunity faded.

Chris_sl said:

It's a Floating Continent with the Warring Triad at the end (holy shit they look cool AND exactly like the 2D spites by the way). Expect FF6 references!

Click to expand...

Got any links? This news gets my nerd boner pretty hard.

Naj_sl said:

The original twister predicted the player's movement and you had to 'juke' it last second. Modern twister is placed behind you so you only have to move. The engine lag (which is still god-awful, 12-13 frames to active a spell and >30 to cancel) had nothing to do with it, it's just the community as a whole didn't understand the (pre-nerf) mechanic.

And really, you mention T2 as a fight with hard mechanics? You needed two people who could alternate interrupts on a 2 second cast and you ran a hot-potato chain once and then stacked together so the mechanic would handle itself as immunity faded.

Click to expand...

That version of Twister still isn't hard. I'll give you that I overestimated T2. Regardless, everything else I said still stands.

Naj_sl said:

The original twister predicted the player's movement and you had to 'juke' it last second. Modern twister is placed behind you so you only have to move. The engine lag (which is still god-awful, 12-13 frames to active a spell and >30 to cancel) had nothing to do with it, it's just the community as a whole didn't understand the (pre-nerf) mechanic.

And really, you mention T2 as a fight with hard mechanics? You needed two people who could alternate interrupts on a 2 second cast and you ran a hot-potato chain once and then stacked together so the mechanic would handle itself as immunity faded.

Click to expand...

I've rarely seen a fight in any game with truly hard mechanics. Once you get to a phase, 99% of the time you just memorize the proper solution. Long-time raiders are not going to see many absolutely "new" mechanics. The greater challenge is optimizing player efficiency (DPS, HPS, damage taken) which requires finding the optimal way to execute mechanics and use CDs.

misery_sl said:

Woops, thought that was a couple of sentences.

Click to expand...

I pretty much 100% agree with you here, I love the MSQ and some of the sidequests like Hildi, the kid detectives one (these will probably merge), and the class quest lines however I feel that the game has really been "sanitized" for a lack of better term.

Dungeons are all the same; clear this many packs, then fight boss, then repeat for 2-3 more bosses. Once in a while you come across a great boss fight that's different (The 4 cannon boss fight from Stone Vigil) but these are very rare.


Itemization is completely lackluster and homogenized by a spreadsheet equation which makes it completely boring. With the exception of the relic (and only because of how long that quest was) I was not excited to get a single piece of loot in this game.

As for raiding other then completing them once to see the content there is absolutely no draw for me. Where are the dropped weapons with different effects? Armour with abilities both passive and active? It all just throwaway loot you will toss out next patch for the next +betterer drop following the almighty Ilvl spreadsheet. The game would benefit from some super uniques and legendary items, but their design philosophy negates pretty much any chance of that, the closest being the relic which is just used as a tool to ensure players continue running completed content over and over for a +betterer weapon.

That being said I still enjoy the game and will keep coming back for new story content, to see the dungeons once or twice, and probably grind out relic 2.0 just cause. I just wish it felt like SE was putting some effort into making their gearing system actually interesting and exciting instead of boring and homogenized.

Kriptini_sl said:

Getting befter gear will only help people meet the enrage. The mechanics of the bosses are still quite difficult. You could take eight random level 60s into T9 (a level 50 raid) and they probably wouldn't be able to clear it.

Click to expand...

Of course. Last time I played this randoms still struggled to do Titan extreme with 60 ilvls on the fight (cause random pugs will probably never again be actual groups of competent players, there are too many people who either just don't care or are literally too stupid to listen or are just flat out trolls who get off by wasting other peoples times). This can be seen when you get 4 groups in a row where people refuse to stack despite 3/4ths of the group asking/telling them to multiple times.

I was mostly just sticking up for Teck because I agree with him that raiding etc. in this game is easy (and agree with the other people who said it's easy in all MMOs) when Paste decided to call him out for being stupid while saying that the clear-rate is low but "Obviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week) but before then it just looks stupid calling it easy." That's like saying normals in wow are hard because you tried running them in greens from the previous expansion.

IMO gearchecks and enrage timers don't make content "hard" unless the gearcheck and enrage timer is directly related to being able to execute at a high level and not simply because you don't have the appropriate level of gear quite yet.

ZombieWizardhawk_sl said:

enrage timers don't make content "hard" unless the enrage timer is directly related to being able to execute at a high level

Click to expand...

That is EXACTLY what FFXIV raiding is, though. You have to be able to handle mechanics perfectly while also maintaining the most DPS you possible can (tanks and healers included) or you just won't clear. These fights are very tightly tuned. Even with the weapons, there are still going to be a ton of people who just can't play well enough to clear it.

And yet you very specifically said the low clear rate wasObviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week)implying that the low clear rate was, in fact, due to people not having the proper gear. You can't say that it's going to be getting cleared more when people get the equipment while also saying it's not going to be cleared more because it's hard content that requires perfect mechanics....

ZombieWizardhawk_sl said:

And yet you very specifically said the low clear rate wasObviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week)implying that the low clear rate was, in fact, due to people not having the proper gear. You can't say that it's going to be getting cleared more when people get the equipment while also saying it's not going to be cleared more because it's hard content that requires perfect mechanics....

Click to expand...

FYI... Krip never said that.

ZombieWizardhawk_sl said:

And yet you very specifically said the low clear rate wasObviously shit will change once more get their welfare/eso weaps (next week)implying that the low clear rate was, in fact, due to people not having the proper gear. You can't say that it's going to be getting cleared more when people get the equipment while also saying it's not going to be cleared more because it's hard content that requires perfect mechanics....

Click to expand...

Xaxius_sl said:

FYI... Krip never said that.

Click to expand...

Having better gear will only slightly widen the window of perfection required, anyways. Most people still won't be able to clear it. (Only 5-10% of players on any NA/EU server were able to clear FCoB, even with 15% Echo.)