Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

There's a lot of stuff left at the end of 4.0 imo, maybe not as much as 3.0 in direct threats(no Nidhogg still running around to kill later) but still. Sure yeah the Empire got his ass kicked and you liberated the cities, but other than the obvious reconstruction which will take a long ass time and is done on 2 different fronts, there's the characters stranded on some island as a nice cliffhanger at the end. On top of that, you're now basically on the edge of the Empire after having openly started a conflict with them, which means there's gonna be more fuckery coming. Kicking them out of occupied territories doesn't mean that suddenly the Empire is done for and won't send armies to take back their shit, so while the threat isn't as near as Nidhogg was, it's still there to be used at some point.

In some ways, the 4.0 ending leaves a lot more follow up in the future and an obvious window into 5.0 content. 3.0 had its own contained story and while it wasn't done at the end of 3.0, finishing it during the further patches was only about closure for this part of the world and not much more. While 4.0 is only the start of what will probably be concluded in 5.0 story when we go and actually kick the Empire's ass all the way to their capital. It will probably create some epic buildup, but it'll probably be slow.

Also 2.1 and 3.1 were all kinda shitty anyway. The patch following the big climax of the expansion scenario is kinda like whatever. It should pick up in 4.2/4.3 until it fully starts the 5.0 hype.

That's why I don't resub for every story patch, I like leaving 2 or 3 of them, since they're often a bit lacking on their own.

Valorath said:

Have they implemented the relic weapons for SB yet?

Click to expand...

No, I think they moved it back? Not sure but usually it should have been patched already since it generally is released halfway during catch up patch, so with 4.15. Might not be until 4.2 now.

Commode - Wikipedia
For some reason in the US the meaning is entirely different than everywhere else in the world.

Anyway it's neat but not as good as it should have been. It's basically a free retainer for glamours only, since it's capped at 200slots only(retainers are 175). They're really wary about server load and stuff which seems a bit absurd to me considering the memory used by a glamour system should be a lot lower than by a retainer, since the only info needed is wether or not you have an item(so a single bit for each item ID), versus the current system where each item has to save a lot of useless data in terms of glamour such as Dye color, spiritbind level, materia slots and repair level. So while there's a lot of items I still think a single bit of info per item would be similar/lower than people keeping a retainer worth of glamour shit on. They can level lock the full glamour system to prevent having to save the info for trial accounts too.

They're also adding a replay feature, which apparently works in dungeons. Seems extremely pointless and hopefully they didn't spend a lot of time on this and are just using modified dev tools like the ones they use for cutscenes, because very few people are going to make extensive uses of this feature.

And then the usual shit, new dungeons, new primal, new raid, new MSQ, new hildibrande. Relic Eureka stuff is also pushed back, again.

I'm probably skipping this too, and I assume the patch after isn't going to be that great since it's a "low content" patch in the cycle, so guess I'll be resub for 4.4 or something.

I would say XIV is a good pick, although it might be worth waiting until the end of the month for 4.2 which is supposed to have some MSQ fixes to some of the fuckery that happens in the last vanilla dungeon(people speedrunning it and making new players miss everything due to cutscenes playing in the dungeon for 20mins). I assume they're replacing it with a NPC based instance instead so you can take your time to watch the cutscenes and still do the fights.

The combat is still slow but I personally haven't minded it too much, you just don't spam buttons as hard as wow, but it's still pretty active and it's still heavily movement based so even though you don't press as many buttons to do your DPS, you move around to dodge shit just as much.

Also since it's story driven, it's in my opinion easier for a non gamer to get into, and you can kinda skip the sidequests filler shit for the most part nowadays until you reach Stormblood(current expansion) so it feels pretty nice, although the 2.1 to 2.4 stuff is still absolute garbage. It also has a lot of casual content and stuff to do on the side.

The other good mmo options I'd say would be wow obviously and guild wars 2. Black desert is too combat focused imo to have an appeal for more casual players but those 3 mmos do otherwise a good job. GW2 has the advantage of not having a sub but might also require a bunch more skill to play well since the combat is more action oriented.

WoW is WoW, you don't stay king for 10+years for nothing, it's easy to get into and for the most part intuitive for a new player to learn, especially with all the mods you can install to make your life easier and it has ridiculous amounts of content just by virtue of being so fucking old. I believe the next expansion/major patch is coming out soonish with new races or whatever the fuck? I clicked the wow thread a couple days ago and I had no idea what half the word were saying, but it looks like people were waiting for pre expansion content and they're merging horde and alliance or something.

As for FoH server, don't think there's one anymore, not many ppl on this forum play that much mmos anymore seeing as how slow every thread moves. I'd say there's more playing wow for sure. It was Gilgamesh originally, but then Gilg was full as fuck so it was a pain to make chars but now that they offered free transfers out it actually moved out of the congested list so should be able to make new chars on it, maybe. Gilgamesh is also the "top raider" server so it's full of 14years old little shits who want to be "competitive" though, so I'm not sure it'd be the best pick to find a relaxed casual guild. With almost everything working cross server now(at least within the same server clusters), you could join kinda whatever server.

I don't know if it's still going but they had a system where making new chars on lower pop servers would give you xp bonuses(great for leveling alts, not so great for story cause you end up having to do lower lvl content a lot since you lvl so fast but not that bad) and 1m gold+15days sub for free for reaching lvl 30. If it's still going and you don't have specific ties, it might be worth doing, just try to pick the least empty of the preferred servers, a lot of them weren't THAT dead last time I checked.

A) Look at this list for the preferred servers: Regarding Character Creation Restrictions and Statuses of Congested/Preferred Worlds | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone . Assuming the promotion for bonuses is still going, then any of the preferred server would work. You can tell by logging in, if you have a Road to 60 buff(double xp), then it'd be still active, not sure it is still, I don't remember seeing it being turned off but I haven't played in a while.

B) As long as you don't start in Limsa Lominsa(MRD/ACN/THF) then you can run to the other place, however your quests would still be in the original place until they merge. I'd recommend making a Lancer or whatever you want to start in Gridannia also, and then leveling gladiator quickly once you reach the first dungeon place. Takes only like 10mins really to get to 15 on a second class(you get 100%xp bonus for any class that's not your highest, until 61 then it's only 50%) so you can do it quick before doing the first dungeon, probably as long as it takes to run your ass from one city to another without a mount.

C) There's no advantage to other classes now, you don't need cross class skills(you just get a pool based on your class' role, so all tanks get the tank skills regardless once they reach the appropriate level) and you also don't need a secondary class to 15 to unlock jobs anymore(WHM just needs 30CNJ instead of 30CNJ+15THM). As for the best tank, assuming your girlfriend isn't the best healer around which if she's not too used to video games is mostly going to be the case, PLD is the best tank once you reach the Stormblood levels. The amount of self healing and cooldowns blows everything else out of the water. Paladin is just in a really good spot overall and is imo one of the most interesting tank to play nowadays. Still boring as fuck getting there though, but it's a solid tank. If you want to play something else on your own though, anything's fine really, don't need the other 2 tanks, it's just easier to gear obviously since they shared gear other than weapons.

D) You have to do normal mode primals for a lot of the story. Normal mode primals are really easy though, and if you can get in a nice guild, anyone can just come and carry you through them easily. But in general people still do the old content since it's part of roulettes, you just queue for it and you should find people decently fast, especially with tank+healer. You might have to wait sometimes but can do side content and stuff, or as I said if you find someone to help you can just go 3man. Most normal mode primals can be soloed by a 70 until the Stormblood ones. Could also make a PF(party finder) asking for a 70 to help clear it quick.

E) No idea about buying gold but pretty sure they only punish the sellers not the buyers. You do get 1m for a fresh account if the promotion thing is still running, which makes money a non factor until you decide to level crafting/buy a house though. Although having a bunch of money would let you buy glamour gear so she can play a big part of the endgame FFXIV, dressup.
As for the leveling pots, lvl 60 doesn't really make you that strong. You could level it to 70 but that'd involve doing all the story quests first, which then means you wouldn't be doing them with her. You can still help her with some stuff but not everything iirc so might not be that great in that regard.

Generally speaking, FFXIV community is pretty nice towards newcomers(just might not want to say it's your GF to not get the creeps pming her stupid shit, like "eh we're new" rather than "she's new"), if you just point out that she's new most people will be pretty accepting if the dungeon takes a bit longer or they have to explain some things. It's probably good to not shelter her too much and try to do the content kinda how it's intended rather than have a 70 bulldoze through everything too.

And as I pointed out, there's still the Castrum fuckery at the end of the 2.0 storyline, if you level slowly you might not get there until the patch, but might be worth waiting a couple of weeks for that fix as it tends to dampen people's opinion of the game pretty quick when they reach that, especially since it's the most epic moment of the story that the whole thing had be building to(until you get to heavensward when shit get real good). 4.2 will be released either on the 23rd or the 30th(probably 30th).