[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[lawow74]

Now if I see a patch note that literally has nothing but new raid content and absolutely nothing else aside from MSQ content? That's a whole new ball game (and likely a new MMO for me at that timeframe). This game has done a fairly good job at having content that covers most all varieties of players; here's to them continuing to do so (and hopefully getting better at it).

That's what's kept me in the game, the knowledge that I will get content for me and not just more and bigger shinies for only raiders through only raiding, the way WoW made me feel. The day FF switches to the 'raid or die' mentality is the day I'm gone.

[Anzaman]

Changes to Veteran Rewards

In light of the considerable amount of time required to obtain the highest rank veteran rewards, we will be making adjustments in patch 4.1 to make them more easily accessible. As of result of these adjustments, players may be eligible for certain rewards soon after the update.

[Saradain]

Changes to Veteran Rewards

In light of the considerable amount of time required to obtain the highest rank veteran rewards, we will be making adjustments in patch 4.1 to make them more easily accessible. As of result of these adjustments, players may be eligible for certain rewards soon after the update.

Well that is convenient, I'll get all of those rewards in 4.1 then...I am 3 days away from the Wild Rose set at the moment, saves some time!

[lawow74]

Well that is convenient, I'll get all of those rewards in 4.1 then...I am 3 days away from the Wild Rose set at the moment, saves some time!

I'll get them all too, I'm at like 420 days.

[Anzaman]

Well that is convenient, I'll get all of those rewards in 4.1 then...I am 3 days away from the Wild Rose set at the moment, saves some time!

At rank 11 (840) days myself, next 3 month sub charge just around the corner apparently.

Guess I'll need to purchase Wind-up Firion & Wild Rose Barding with achievement points.

[Wrecktangle]

>MogStation
>Subscription time
>Cancel

I guess I could pay $$60 per year to play for 1 week each patch week and cancel once the game was turned into raids, raids, more raids, and all other content was scrapped.

Try not to focus on this bit, I even outright was against it. I won't deny that I think we (as in raiders) need a bone and I'm not personally sold that ultimate is the right bone to throw.

Guard Scorpion was originally defeated by a team of 3 people in FFVII. Not sure why it needs to be extremely difficult content only a raid of 8 can handle to "do it justice."

Not extremely difficult, just not AFK and clear. There's a middle ground and a ripe opportunity I would think. I don't mean that that boss was hard in FF7 so it needs to be hard in FF14, that's silly. I'm saying it's an iconic first boss with iconic mechanics (counter hits, big damage laser etc) from an iconic installment of the series. I know there's stuff like Yojimbo, Diabolos, maybe Tonberry King that people might like to see more engaging versions of.

From a pure design concept, the attacks sound reasonable. Difficulty is typically more about fine tuning the amount of damage each attack does, etc.

It would still require development time and not just a week or two. Getting it to work, rescripting the fight, setting up the fight itself with quest/story (unless we're going down the path that FFXIV can scrap story and do more "just because" raids), and then tuning the fight, plus testing the fight internally to ready for release still adds up.

For sure. I'm just saying let's assume a random fresh trial takes 3 months to build from scratch (if anyone has the actual data I'd be interested, I'm straight spitballing here). I happen to remember that a enormous portion of their dev time is art/animating. If they could even cut it down to half (I'd honestly expect even quicker, but I'll compromise here) they could get a lot more trial content out to people that do it.

We can cheese the story bit, by utilizing the Gold Saucer (battle arena?) or the Wandering Minstrel. No one should have any issues with that given the way it's currently handled.

What non-raid content would you scrap development resources on in order to shift over to put out more raids in every patch? It's going to be a decision at some point, so if we're hypothetically theorizing about adding more raid content in every patch, what are we hypothetically debating we scrap in exchange?

This is a much tougher question to answer and likely to be biased/selfish. On one hand I would have gladly given up the iteration of Chocobo racing we got (so they could actually make one that is good). I would gladly have given up Diadem 1 and 2 (and probably 3 if their track record remains). I would gladly have given up LoV. Stuff like gardening I'd give up in a heartbeat, I'd have given up the squadron bit (granted they are evolving this system so I WILL give redemption credit here).

This bit is kinda snarky, but bear with me. I would gladly give up that having to make fairly sweeping job tuning changes as frequently as they have been recently. I can't speak for SMN, but I know there's a lot of pain points there. I can speak for DRG and I know for a fact if they had a beta and I play tested it a HUGE red flag would have gone up about the eyes mechanic. I'm honestly dumbfounded how something that silly made it to release. It's almost as if they didn't even test it, other than than it works (not how it feels/plays). Based on this, I have to assume that the same applies to other jobs (i.e. did they even test Shake it off?/SMNs or WHM lillies before they reworked them?). I'm not saying they need to be perfect, but you really don't need to be a dev to see that some ideas are just not good, let alone when played just feel awful.

What would you give up (besides savage raids, you can pick other raiding content though) to get more of whatever content you enjoy?

Treating anyone who doesn't meet your arbitrary standards, despite the requirements of the content, as a waste of a player and kicking them is not just elitist, but being an asshole.

Agreed on the asshole bit. Am I an elitist if I only want to play with people who put as much effort in as me (keep in mind effort =/= skill)? You can be bad, but trying. They're my favorite players and some of my favorite memories in this game. Those learning parties where everyone works together and gets shit done because THEY want to get better and clear. I don't tolerate people not trying.

"Nice work, everyone, we one shot the boss with no deaths, not even a single point where things seemed dicey. That was a smooth run!"
"Yeah, but ____ had low DPS. Can we not bring them anymore?" <------ I wouldn't even want to play with this guy in the future. They're an ass.

Yeah they're an ass. Context would definitely be important here. Is this a static/FC? (I'm also assuming it's not playful ribbing). If it's a PF/pug I don't see much of an issue. If you carried someone through content, I wouldn't repeatedly carry them. I have better things to do. Am I an elitist lol? I'm just saying I'm not running a charity. I don't want to do your HW for you, but I'll HELP teach you how to do the HW.

Or, one of my favorites: The hard mode raider that belittes everyone doing less DPS than them. Despite a 30-40 ilvl difference, they still laugh about how pathetic everyone else's DPS is compared to theirs. (This was my most common annoyance in MoP LFR)

I mean, it was probably a hard mode raider who had 40th percentile sure, which lends credence to my original statement (very often the middle guys who harass/oppress the smaller guy). truly elite players don't really associate with low skilled players very often and only speak up against true atrocities (i.e. i330+ WAR, no deaths, dealing 1.6k dps in O3S.) Even if I sat in tank stance 100% of the fight I could do like 2.6k.

I like the idea; heck, if it doesn't qualify as "retune this for 8 people"...have that be an EX version of the normal dungeon. Personally, that's one area I think they could capitalize on; this game's absolutely starving for 4 man content that actually has some bite to it.

Agreed on the 4m bit. I definitely think there's room for improvement there, but I think the content I designed is better suited for 8m (I'm honestly not super sure how to design good engaging small party content from a tanking perspective without a complete healing/tanking mitigation paradigm redesign.

[Faroth]

I understand resources are finite, but there's a difference between "more raid content" and "raids, raids, all the raids, raids: kills bugs dead, fuck everything else". Ok, that's a bit overdramatic on my end...

Perhaps I was putting too much emphasis on the "triple the raid content" notion. If development were diverted to TRIPLE the amount of raid content.... I don't see there being much for anything else.

Just curious, does the upcoming Ultimate Bahamut not go over well, since (at least based on the feedback at the Reddit hivemind), the reason there's not 2 dungeons in this odd numbered patch is so that they can add Ultimate Bahamut. Let's say they add an Ultimate encounter each odd numbered patch...we're talking 3 whole fights in 2 years, albeit aimed at only the best players. That's perfectly acceptable, in my book.

Well we went from 3 dungeons to 2 and now every other patch is down to 1. We're progressively decreasing non-raid content already. I think that's why people are unsure about the direction. It's the old WoW conundrum of designing the game around 10% of the player base as your primary focus vibe starting to show up. At least, that's what I imagine how some are seeing it.

Personally, I'm more baffled there isn't more 4 man content that is above faceroll difficulty, as I noted in my reply to Wreck. The boss fight he described could be an EX version of the same boss and still tuned for 4 people, keeping it closer to the 3 person fight it was borrowed from, which I was unaware of seeing that I didn't play 7 and beyond because I was an angry teenager over how Square abandoned my (at the time) beloved Nintendo.

I think a lot of people were hoping for "savage" dungeons to be introduced.

Try not to focus on this bit, I even outright was against it. I won't deny that I think we (as in raiders) need a bone and I'm not personally sold that ultimate is the right bone to throw.

Yeah, I was saying that proposal would probably have me quitting. TRIPLING the amount of raid content would massively take away resources from... pretty much anything else, I think.

Not extremely difficult, just not AFK and clear. There's a middle ground and a ripe opportunity I would think. I don't mean that that boss was hard in FF7 so it needs to be hard in FF14, that's silly. I'm saying it's an iconic first boss with iconic mechanics (counter hits, big damage laser etc) from an iconic installment of the series. I know there's stuff like Yojimbo, Diabolos, maybe Tonberry King that people might like to see more engaging versions of.

I've been doing the fight wrong... I didn't realize I can just afk the fight.

I suppose I can see that. I'm a little surprised the 8 man raid, now that it's got a normal Finder version, isn't used for the story climax. Ala Mhigo being an 8 man raid concluding with Shinryu, for example.

For sure. I'm just saying let's assume a random fresh trial takes 3 months to build from scratch (if anyone has the actual data I'd be interested, I'm straight spitballing here). I happen to remember that a enormous portion of their dev time is art/animating. If they could even cut it down to half (I'd honestly expect even quicker, but I'll compromise here) they could get a lot more trial content out to people that do it.

How many trials have we gotten in HW vs ARR? I haven't thought to add it up.

We can cheese the story bit, by utilizing the Gold Saucer (battle arena?) or the Wandering Minstrel. No one should have any issues with that given the way it's currently handled.

I suppose now that we've liberated Ala Mhigo, you could even use a gladiator arena. Wasn't Ala Mhigo more known for it than Ul'dah? Isn't that where Raubahn got the "Raging Bull" title? That would actually allow for a one time story and from then on, simply adding new challenges to the arena.

This is a much tougher question to answer and likely to be biased/selfish. On one hand I would have gladly given up the iteration of Chocobo racing we got (so they could actually make one that is good). I would gladly have given up Diadem 1 and 2 (and probably 3 if their track record remains). I would gladly have given up LoV. Stuff like gardening I'd give up in a heartbeat, I'd have given up the squadron bit (granted they are evolving this system so I WILL give redemption credit here).

I could see Lord of Vermillion being reconsidered. I'm not sure it gets much use. I think Triple Triad has proved more popular.

So it sounds like primarily the Gold Saucer content would be you top pick for the chopping block. I wouldn't count Diadem because that's based on hindsight of how it turned out. Some might disagree with that choice, but I can understand the basis for the sentiment.

What would you give up (besides savage raids, you can pick other raiding content though) to get more of whatever content you enjoy?

I actually don't think there's raid content I'd scrap in exchange for something else right now. I think things are in a pretty good place for me. They're even doing what I hoped and keeping the Custom Delivery as a "24 man catch up" equivalent for crafting's more grindy initial progress.

I like how Exdeath actually has an additional phase and form in Savage rather than being totally the same fight. That sort of stuff is more appealing to me wanting to do Savage at some point rather than "it's harder and the gear is better/dyeable." After doing a raid on normal, I'm just not motivated to do the harder version simply for the sake of harder + gear stats.

Outside of raiding? I'd probably currently say I'd like to see more resources put over in the Squadron concept to flesh it out and do more with it (I wish I could pick my squadron & customize them like a retainer) more than the Lost Canals. We've been running them at the end of FC night and they're not as rewarding as Aquapolis felt. Nothing that drops in there seems terribly rare, so we're not getting much value from it.

I kinda wonder if Diadem would be interesting if it was designed as a throw back to old school MMOs. Like you go in with a group and basically whoever tags a monster has claim to it. They get loot, others don't. You go find yourself a spot in the zone and camp it, pulling enemies. Only...if you screw up they can and will overwhelm you. And there's no leash. You have to get to certain places to escape them, resulting in the old school trains that could not only wipe your group, but other groups on the path from your location to the safe zone.

Add in labyrthine style dungeon structures in the zone and the deeper you go the better the gear/rewards you'll find. You want to fight your way in to find a camp spot for your time there. I'd even go a little nuts and say Savage raid gear has a chance to drop from a specific mob in the deepest level. For EQ veterans, I'm talking the "Flowing Black Silk Sash" type of camping. The Unrest or Mistmoore Manor type zones that are mazes and a party of 4 have to work just to get down to that level. A mistake can have you running back to the exit, which means running through all the respawns that have come back behind you, which means a better chance of dying. If you can get down to the bottom, then you have a chance to farm a mob, waiting for it to respawn, for a CHANCE of that savage level item dropping.

If you want to be particularly old school cruel..... along with the time limit, you could have a death limit. If the group wipes x number of times, you're out. They could even take a few of the traps and counters to them from Palace of the Dead (non dispellable buffs, but if you have items from the zone, they can counteract them, etc.).

Outside these maze type areas, you could still have boss type monsters above ground. Rather than first tag, you could have the group that does the most damage gets extra rewards. Everyone who participates gets something, but the best reward is the top damage dealers.

Not sure if a throw back like this would appeal to modern MMOers, but it would certainly create different content than other places.

Agreed on the asshole bit. Am I an elitist if I only want to play with people who put as much effort in as me (keep in mind effort =/= skill)? You can be bad, but trying. They're my favorite players and some of my favorite memories in this game. Those learning parties where everyone works together and gets shit done because THEY want to get better and clear. I don't tolerate people not trying.

Since you just said they can be bad but trying, I don't think you're lining up with what I'm describing. Sometimes a player just isn't as good. They try and try but just don't seem to get it. But if they're doing enough to manage mechanics and the group as a whole is having no struggles, even if their DPS isn't optimum, I don't see a reason to make a big deal out of their performance.

In WoW we had one DPS that was usually lower on DPS, but we didn't really struggle. He was also always there with repair bots, consumables (food everyone could benefit from), and was really good at handling mechanics that required a DPS to shift focus to something else (like keeping something CC'd on trash pulls, etc). He wasn't a great DPS output, but he still contributed in other ways and ultimately wasn't detrimental to the group, so nobody ever had any issues.

Then again, I've also been very fortunate to raid 100% with people who knew each other IRL to some degree of separation. 4 of us were friends irl, then the others were a friend's guildmates who knew each other irl, and one was someone we only knew in game (and have since met irl multiple times). As the raid leader at that time, the loot arguments I had to step in on was getting tired of wasting time over "nah, you take it, I got something last time" vs "no, no, it benefits you more, you take." Ultimately, a problem any raid should be happy to have with that loot model.

Yeah they're an ass. Context would definitely be important here. Is this a static/FC? (I'm also assuming it's not playful ribbing). If it's a PF/pug I don't see much of an issue. If you carried someone through content, I wouldn't repeatedly carry them. I have better things to do. Am I an elitist lol? I'm just saying I'm not running a charity. I don't want to do your HW for you, but I'll HELP teach you how to do the HW.

That was just a random example, not an existing one I've experienced. Just used it to define what I consider elitist.

Agreed on the 4m bit. I definitely think there's room for improvement there, but I think the content I designed is better suited for 8m (I'm honestly not super sure how to design good engaging small party content from a tanking perspective without a complete healing/tanking mitigation paradigm redesign.

I'll agree here too. I feel like ARR dungeons had a little more punch to their power. I'd like to see that come back, at least when you first tackle them and are at the appropriate ilvl. The roulettes might need to tighten down the level sync a little more as well. When roulettes were basically tomestone gear + the occasional Coil raider, they seemed more balanced around the average gear. Now we've got tomestones + 24 man + 10 man normal + 10 man savage gear sets across an expansion yet the dungeons seem like they're still aimed at people with dungeon gear primarily. That's fine, but then the sync for everyone in better gear needs to bring our stats down to be more even with what the dungeon is meant for initially.

[Kazgrel]

Changes to Veteran Rewards

In light of the considerable amount of time required to obtain the highest rank veteran rewards, we will be making adjustments in patch 4.1 to make them more easily accessible. As of result of these adjustments, players may be eligible for certain rewards soon after the update.

Well shit. Now I'll have 3 more outfits I have to figure out where to store.

[dope_danny]

Changes to Veteran Rewards

In light of the considerable amount of time required to obtain the highest rank veteran rewards, we will be making adjustments in patch 4.1 to make them more easily accessible. As of result of these adjustments, players may be eligible for certain rewards soon after the update.

Neat, but i forgot to check at this point, i got the cloud outfit, put it in the bank and never looked at it again and thats about it. I guess the Zidane outfit is cool an all but wheres the BLM lulu outfit?

[Kaelwryn]

Well shit. Now I'll have 3 more outfits I have to figure out where to store.

They should be armoire-able.

[Graeham]

Well, I've wanted achievement points to have a use for a while now. I just hope they add stuff for those of us who already obtained all of the veteran rewards...

[Granyala]

Any tech savvy people who can help me with an issue a friend is having on PC?

Bought him the starter edition and he's getting this error on boot.

[11035][5][19900][5]

We tried searching online and did what it said and no luck. We changed DEP settings, ran it as admin, reinstalled it three times, made sure it was allowed through the firewall and no luck whatsoever.

He's running Windows 10 and everything is upto date and whatnot.

Try this one, if it doesn't work delete all square enix related content from your documents folder.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/39210...5684567443349/

[Kazgrel]

Agreed on the 4m bit. I definitely think there's room for improvement there, but I think the content I designed is better suited for 8m (I'm honestly not super sure how to design good engaging small party content from a tanking perspective without a complete healing/tanking mitigation paradigm redesign.

They could toss in a fight similar to Valithra or whatever her name was...the green dragon "healer fight" prior to Sindragosa in ICC. Course, given the current job design in FF14, people would want PLD tanks as well for that just to dump more healing on the "boss", or to be able to heal themselves + the dps while the healer goes ham on said boss.

I, too, am at a bit of a loss trying to sort what a tank could do when left solo outside of "hit the cds for the tank busters". That was one thing I liked with the last 2 dungeons that were added in HW. While they largely tickled any tank over 250 ilvl, being in there just over the minimum needed made for a fun time if one of those got through unmitigated. But..yay, tankbusters, haven't seen that before, right?

- - - Updated - - -

Perhaps I was putting too much emphasis on the "triple the raid content" notion. If development were diverted to TRIPLE the amount of raid content.... I don't see there being much for anything else.

No worries; just me being all "let's take this post at face value", where the amount of raid content would simply triple out of the blue, no strings attached, vs. actually looking at it beyond that, as you did, knowing full and well that resources are finite and something would have to give somewhere.

I'll agree here too. I feel like ARR dungeons had a little more punch to their power. I'd like to see that come back, at least when you first tackle them and are at the appropriate ilvl. The roulettes might need to tighten down the level sync a little more as well. When roulettes were basically tomestone gear + the occasional Coil raider, they seemed more balanced around the average gear. Now we've got tomestones + 24 man + 10 man normal + 10 man savage gear sets across an expansion yet the dungeons seem like they're still aimed at people with dungeon gear primarily. That's fine, but then the sync for everyone in better gear needs to bring our stats down to be more even with what the dungeon is meant for initially.

This would definitely be the first mile marker toward making dungeons require people to be awake to complete. The ilvl sync is dungeon specific, though, since the roulettes could end up with dungeons spanning from an entire year. That said, seems they basically phoned it in on doing that as of 3.2 in HW; after the 2 dungeons they added in 3.1, no other dungeon afterwards featured an ilvl sync, and even those 2 dungeons had a ridiculously lax ilvl sync (240, I believe, for dungeons that drop ilvl 185 gear...).

I'd rather see the emergence of something akin to EX dungeons in a manner similar to what I described instead of them going back and trying to sort out what ilvl sync to set old dungeons to that people have gotten accustomed to facerolling. I doubt many folks will be thrilled to see the same dungeons they've been steamrolling for tomestones for years suddenly becoming remotely challenging, but hey, maybe the playerbase would surprise me.

- - - Updated - - -

They should be armoire-able.

I forgot about that thing (and I'm sure I'm far from the only one who has).

I keep some of those items on a retainer due to having dyed them with jet black or other such expensive dyes.

[Anzaman]

Apparently ShopTo has included digital gametime cards into the campaign.



https://www.shopto.net/microsite/in-game-campaign

[Eleccybubb]

Apparently ShopTo has included digital gametime cards into the campaign.



https://www.shopto.net/microsite/in-game-campaign

They just got Dragon Quest Heroes 2 back in stock as well. YAY!

Just gotta register an account then I'll get 60 days of time methinks just for the sake of getting the items.

Wait I have to enter my card details to activate the account? Uhm.. Can I delete these card details later because I'm not exactly wanting to keep the card stored on this site.

And I can only buy the damn digital card with Paypal.... -,-

[Anzaman]

And I can only buy the damn digital card with Paypal.... -,-

Looks like it - created account and was planning to purchase digital game time card.. only shows PayPal option in basket.

Guess I won't be purchasing it then.

[Eleccybubb]

Looks like it - created account and was planning to purchase digital game time card.. only shows PayPal option in basket.

Guess I won't be purchasing it then.

You can use a guest option with Paypal.

I just did that.

Order is taking it's sweet time to process though for a digital one.

Seriously next time they do a promo. Use a better damn site than Shopto. Or just do it through the Mogstation where you buy an item and get the free code for crying out loud.

Once this is done though closing this account and getting my payment info off of it. Only 3 things I keep my info saved on are Steam for FF14, Amazon and PS.

Yay got my redemption code. And my 3 item codes

[Anzaman]

You can use a guest option with Paypal.

I just did that.
...
Yay got my redemption code. And my 3 item codes

Sweet, guess I'll try it as well.

[Eleccybubb]

Sweet, guess I'll try it as well.

Got my item code straight away but it's still processing the 60 days. How long does it take to process a bloody digital order?

And I don't think I can delete my damn payment info until I get the code for the 60 days or it won't process it.

Seriously this site is awful.

"ORDER STATUS- COMPLETED"

Then where is my code?

[Deleted]

Between running expert roulette and O1-O4 normal clear, you should be able to reach 310 no problem even if you just dinged 70 today.

Well I just unlocked expert roulette realizing that those two dungeons were much easier than ala mhigo and not caped on ilvl (yeah carry me!).

I started to wonder: How hard are these extreme difficulty bosses and how hard is organized content compared to like WoW? I joined some FCs just to be without them after a short break, never really doing anything with them. I'm not confident in my skills anymore but sometimes I wonder if organized content could be easier than like Nidhogg/Susano on story mode?

I'm in FF14 atm and still have good 2 months left payed - so I wonder, maybe I try some FC again. But I need to know the difficulties. Can you guys give me some insight?