[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[dope_danny]

Well i made it 7 days trying Legion and gave up. I did everything up to Kiljaeden but the whole time i was thinking 'man i mis Eorzea'. Theres so many improvements over warlords but i just dont think the new world areas engage me as much as areas from vanilla and wrath in particular did. Its better than WoD no question but i just found myself wanting to play FXIV and dick around gardening or chocobo racing or something.

[Katchii]

Well i made it 7 days trying Legion and gave up. I did everything up to Kiljaeden but the whole time i was thinking 'man i mis Eorzea'. Theres so many improvements over warlords but i just dont think the new world areas engage me as much as areas from vanilla and wrath in particular did. Its better than WoD no question but i just found myself wanting to play FXIV and dick around gardening or chocobo racing or something.

That's how I feel sometimes too, sometimes the world itself is what I'm invested in and sometimes it's the character. There have been several times that simply being in the world gets on my nerves, even if playing my character is still somewhat entertaining. I'm in a weird place now because I'm invested in the world of FFXIV, but in my characters in WoW so I am choosing WoW most of the time now simply because the only activity I want to take part in in FFXIV is leveling my classes...which is very tedious and boring most of the time IMO.

For now, for me, I feel more invested in WoW simply because of the expansion announcement and my feeling of need to have an Alliance character at max level so I can unlock the new Allied Races on both factions. I'm a Horde main with all classes at 110 and class halls mission complete, which leaves no room for any Alliance characters on the server since there are an equal number of character slots per server as there are classes. I finally got my Death Knight to 100....and kind of lost interest. The prospect of having to go through the Legion leveling content, again, when I've already done it 12 times is just not appealing enough to make me want to do it. Ironically though, i'm now working on my Horde Death Knight in an effort to make him my "main" for the next expansion and going forward with what's left in this one because I just love the Death Knight aesthetic and lore. I had previously mained a Warlock, simply because as an Affliction Warlock I was basically unstoppable in world PvE content, but the game play has just become so stale and boring.

I recently redownloaded and started playing Guild Wars 2 and bought the expansions which gave me a TON of content to explore. Given that it's B2P I don't feel pressured into playing it, and it has provided a nice casual alternative to WoW and FFXIV when I just don't feel motivated to play either of them. It's fun and different. Only complaint I have is that you get most of your skills and weapon types very early in the game so combat from that point on is exactly the same, ....until you've spent a HUGE amount of time unlocking the advanced masteries at max level and thats only if you choose to use that mastery.

[lawow74]

Thancred was never evil, he was possessed. He doesn't have that much of a redemption arc so much as a personal feeling that he needs to do so.
Regulus was never evil so much as opposing sides of the conflict who made a heroic sacrifice. He didn't really flip or have a redemption arc.
Nero......is he really redeemed? He seems more like a personal opportunist through and through.
Estinien softened, but didn't really go from good to evil to redemption arc either.
Lolorito..... same as Nero. Has he changed? He seems same as he ever was. Personal advantage neutral with slight good leanings more than good or evil.

Touching back on this, both Thancred and Estinien did their evil when they were possessed, by an Ascian and Nidhogg, respectively. You can argue Estinien killed a lot of dragons over the years that didn't need to be killed, but the same can be said of the dragons killing Ishgardians. That is a consequence of war: innocents die.

Estinien is the honorable soldier, who when he saw the perverted reasons the conflict was started over and the complete indifference his superiors felt towards the truth of it all turned his back on what was the law and towards what was right, what was good.

I don't really remember Regulus enough to comment. Nero is essentially a dark reflection of Cid. Brilliant but lacking in the scruples department, yet pragmatic about his own survival and taking a certain joy in being able to stick his thumb in Cid's eye while doing things to aid Cid's allies. He might go full-bore to evil again for the right reasons, but not on a simple whim.

Lolorito is just not doing evil right now (that we know of...) He's every bit the ruthless capitalist he was and always will be. It's just a matter of degrees and layers of his schemes, always looking for the better deal, the best return on investment. And if that means betraying someone, he'll no more bat an eye over it than he will discarding trash in a wastebin.

[Kaelwryn]

Its Regula you nerds. > Regula van Hydrus. I will forever be upset with Square about him. Don't really see to much of him, outside of the small amount of time together during the warring triad quests. Regardless, Regula isn't really evil. He's a lot like Gaius is that the means often justifies the end and that Garlemald is doing what is best for Hydaelyn. He's considered to be an honourable man, who is deeply loyal to Varis and to his troops.

I agree with Faroth. He didn't really have a redemption arc, he did what he thought was right. Nothing more. Your time with him really didn't change his thought process.

[lawow74]

Its Regula you nerds. Regula van Hydrus.

Right, Smegma van Hyrule. That's why I don't remember him, I didn't do those quests since they fall under the banner of 'content too frustrating to bother with'. Same with other EX Trials and all Raid content.

[Graeham]

Regula remains one of my favourite characters in FFXIV.

I feel like the developers dropped the ball with him, though. They killed him off very abruptly and didn't bring him up again despite it being a huge deal for a high ranking Garlean soldier to risk their life and sacrifice themselves for the sake of one of the Scions. I was expecting one of the Scions present to make a comparison between Zenos and Regula. Yet that didn't happen.

[dope_danny]

Man some people are VERY salty the 'FFXI event returning' wasn't the Shantotto one with her wind up minion. I know XI players that held off on XIV till RDM that are desperate for that thing.

Y'know. BECAUSE WINDURST IS THE BEST, BASTOK A SHIT.

SHIT

[lawow74]

Complain long enough, they might get it back. Or maybe they'll slap it up on Mogstation for the trollface value.

[dope_danny]

honestly i'm surprised they havent. I mean its been like 3 years and she is XI's flagship character they still use in all the stuff like dissidia and the FF TCG.

[Graeham]

The emote that can be bought upon hitting maximum reputation with the Kojin is pretty neat. The mount isn't bad either - though it's effectively just a +1 to my collection since I'm unlikely to use it.

I also managed to hit 2 lines for this week's Wondrous Tails. A shame it didn't happen last week - I would have gotten a Wind-Up Hien if it did.

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Oh, hey...



I can't say I expected that. They're really pushing FFXV these days. At Distant Worlds it dominated the pre-concert adverts as well. I have to wonder if this means that we'll be seeing the FFXV crossover event for FFXIV that was teased a while back? There's been radio silence ever since.

[dope_danny]

Man, back in Eorzea after a week in WoW has been an eye opener. The community in particular. Jesus christ did i actually forget how absolutely over the top rude the WoW EU community is. If i had a penny for every "fucking retards" or "dont tell me how to play cunts" i saw i would be ordering myself a goddamn papa jhons right about now.
You hear people go "but thats anecdotal" or "every game is as bad!" and no, fuck that noise. Its like new people came in, got used to the default being "asshole angry with a long customer service call" and dialled it up from there.

Then i get back on XIV and first dungeon is nothing but "hello, nice to meet you" type stuff and a wipe was "i'm sorry sorry" and "dont worry about it man it happens" and its like night and day. Mechanically both games offer good things and bad things. But either i've gotten used to XIV's nicer baseline attitude or the WoW community has gotten old and bitter.

[Faroth]

Right, Smegma van Hyrule. That's why I don't remember him, I didn't do those quests since they fall under the banner of 'content too frustrating to bother with'. Same with other EX Trials and all Raid content.

You are now the Gourry Gabriev of our forum.



I started Horizon: Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds DLC last week and then realized clock's ticking and I've got a massive project with a deadline looming....

I'm trying to convert/archive about 200 vinyl records to mp3 to give my Dad for Christmas before we sell his old record collection. That means a lot more time at the computer, not at the PS4!

So.....Mining gained a couple of levels and I'm 65 on CRP now. Going to work through the other crafting jobs to get them to 65 and work them up to save on gear taking up space.

As a result, the bedroom in my medium house is mostly put together, but I need to get smithing up for a few absolute hands down, no question MUST have items.

The samurai armor display and the katana display must be made....

I wish they'd have paper partitions without the sliding door, though. I could use some of those in a couple of places.

And some of the winners of the housing design contest are absolutely amazing.

I think it's a guarantee we'll get the tabletop rock garden in the near future. I want the Koi Pond.

[Kazgrel]

Should've known better than to try and jump into a learning party for Shin EX with all of this DDoS nonsense plaguing the NA datacenter. Had 3-4 wipes as a result of people (namely healers) getting 90ked at random points of the fight. Only managed to get to the add phase a couple of times, and each of those times I was dead because only one healer was generally up at that point.

Since I'm nearing the end of the process for leveling all the things (DRG at 65), I'll need to be stepping up into some more difficult stuff. My brief foray into Diablo 3 the other day lasted all of maybe 30 minutes before I realized "geez I'm bored of this already".

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Man, back in Eorzea after a week in WoW has been an eye opener. The community in particular. Jesus christ did i actually forget how absolutely over the top rude the WoW EU community is. If i had a penny for every "fucking retards" or "dont tell me how to play cunts" i saw i would be ordering myself a goddamn papa jhons right about now.
You hear people go "but thats anecdotal" or "every game is as bad!" and no, fuck that noise. Its like new people came in, got used to the default being "asshole angry with a long customer service call" and dialled it up from there.

Then i get back on XIV and first dungeon is nothing but "hello, nice to meet you" type stuff and a wipe was "i'm sorry sorry" and "dont worry about it man it happens" and its like night and day. Mechanically both games offer good things and bad things. But either i've gotten used to XIV's nicer baseline attitude or the WoW community has gotten old and bitter.

Reading through some of the postings in PF for various groups and you'll find some real winners in the vein of what you described encountering in WoW. This game isn't 100% innocent on the playerbase front. Not to mention petty; had one guy blacklist me due to hunt call out macro..."A wild <t> appears! <pos>". Shit you not; I've used that for almost 2 years now and have never had a complaint about it. Most people who see it usually laugh at it. Joke's on the person that blacklisted me, though; I get call outs from them, but they don't see mine.

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You are now the Gourry Gabriev of our forum.



I started Horizon: Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds DLC last week and then realized clock's ticking and I've got a massive project with a deadline looming....

I'm trying to convert/archive about 200 vinyl records to mp3 to give my Dad for Christmas before we sell his old record collection. That means a lot more time at the computer, not at the PS4!

So.....Mining gained a couple of levels and I'm 65 on CRP now. Going to work through the other crafting jobs to get them to 65 and work them up to save on gear taking up space.

As a result, the bedroom in my medium house is mostly put together, but I need to get smithing up for a few absolute hands down, no question MUST have items.

The samurai armor display and the katana display must be made....

I wish they'd have paper partitions without the sliding door, though. I could use some of those in a couple of places.

And some of the winners of the housing design contest are absolutely amazing.

I think it's a guarantee we'll get the tabletop rock garden in the near future. I want the Koi Pond.

I only realized that katana stand even existed as of yesterday when a friend of mine linked it and I was like "dafuq, I never saw that listed anywhere". But I'm a relatively lazy shit when it comes to house decoration; most of the stuff in mine is either off a vendor, from an event, or brought to me via retainers. I did make a few basic items for convenience, though...retainer bell, FC chest, aesthetician bell, etc.

[lawow74]

You are now the Gourry Gabriev of our forum.

*whips out the Sword of Light, carves some hams up for lunch, three sides of pork later...* Oh, did you want some, Nearoth?

[Remilia]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...02ec35e0e1ea6e
We be dotaing now.

[Wrecktangle]

Realized it after responding, so this will be my last post on the WoW story in here.

Fair enough - I'll drop that bit, I honestly don't have the time atm to respond anyway in depth.

Thancred was never evil, he was possessed. He doesn't have that much of a redemption arc so much as a personal feeling that he needs to do so.
Regulus was never evil so much as opposing sides of the conflict who made a heroic sacrifice. He didn't really flip or have a redemption arc.
Nero......is he really redeemed? He seems more like a personal opportunist through and through.
Estinien softened, but didn't really go from good to evil to redemption arc either.
Lolorito..... same as Nero. Has he changed? He seems same as he ever was. Personal advantage neutral with slight good leanings more than good or evil.

Try to remember the origin of my statement. It was in response to lawow stating that Blizz overuses that trope. Which is fair criticism for sure. What isn't fair is being blind to the fact that it exists in almost every game, including FF14. You may not like my examples, but remember to look at the base of the argument.

Even though some of these people aren't evil, neither were some of the Blizz instances. It's just antagonists in different circumstances. Even if someone is bad or does bad things they are not evil. The point of my post wasn't to nitpick, it was to show that it's not about the trope, it's about how the trope is used. FF14 does an excellent job with this for sure. My statement was to try and enlighten those that Blizz isn't terrible at it either.

A redemption arc can be as simple as having a change of heart (a la Regula) in a single spitting moment. It can also be more in depth to something like Estinien. A redemption arc doesn't need to be from absolute evil to paragon of good either. It can be from bad to gray, from bad to good, and any shade in between. If we wanted to argue the finer bits of specific examples I'm totally down for that, but the purpose of my list was to draw the bias out of the equation and show that it exists all around us.

His reasons were a little off the rails crazy, though. If we boil it down to the simplest description, he killed a LOT of people because he was essentially bored with life. But that off the rails crazy, with reasons from his crazy point of view, is why I did like him.

Agreed.

I'm somewhat split on the test server idea. It could allow players to try out new job changes and provide feedback that may (or may not) result in changes for the better. I do see how such a server could lend itself to spoilers. I'll say that I don't believe they've done anything egregious enough to warrant a "need" for PTR.

On one hand test server would have identified clear job issues almost immediately. I'd be ok with that.

On another hand I'm not sure enough people would be testing to actually crash at Rauhban Savage, thus negating that point. It would also probably be better if they didn't let you test MSQ to prevent spoilers.

That's how I feel sometimes too, sometimes the world itself is what I'm invested in and sometimes it's the character. There have been several times that simply being in the world gets on my nerves, even if playing my character is still somewhat entertaining. I'm in a weird place now because I'm invested in the world of FFXIV, but in my characters in WoW so I am choosing WoW most of the time now simply because the only activity I want to take part in in FFXIV is leveling my classes...which is very tedious and boring most of the time IMO.

For now, for me, I feel more invested in WoW simply because of the expansion announcement and my feeling of need to have an Alliance character at max level so I can unlock the new Allied Races on both factions. I'm a Horde main with all classes at 110 and class halls mission complete, which leaves no room for any Alliance characters on the server since there are an equal number of character slots per server as there are classes. I finally got my Death Knight to 100....and kind of lost interest. The prospect of having to go through the Legion leveling content, again, when I've already done it 12 times is just not appealing enough to make me want to do it. Ironically though, i'm now working on my Horde Death Knight in an effort to make him my "main" for the next expansion and going forward with what's left in this one because I just love the Death Knight aesthetic and lore. I had previously mained a Warlock, simply because as an Affliction Warlock I was basically unstoppable in world PvE content, but the game play has just become so stale and boring.

What you should do is reroll alliance on stormrage and clown around with ya boy. We only raid heroic these days so come tag along, it's basically free.

Touching back on this, both Thancred and Estinien did their evil when they were possessed, by an Ascian and Nidhogg, respectively. You can argue Estinien killed a lot of dragons over the years that didn't need to be killed, but the same can be said of the dragons killing Ishgardians. That is a consequence of war: innocents die.

Estinien is the honorable soldier, who when he saw the perverted reasons the conflict was started over and the complete indifference his superiors felt towards the truth of it all turned his back on what was the law and towards what was right, what was good.

I don't really remember Regulus enough to comment. Nero is essentially a dark reflection of Cid. Brilliant but lacking in the scruples department, yet pragmatic about his own survival and taking a certain joy in being able to stick his thumb in Cid's eye while doing things to aid Cid's allies. He might go full-bore to evil again for the right reasons, but not on a simple whim.

Lolorito is just not doing evil right now (that we know of...) He's every bit the ruthless capitalist he was and always will be. It's just a matter of degrees and layers of his schemes, always looking for the better deal, the best return on investment. And if that means betraying someone, he'll no more bat an eye over it than he will discarding trash in a wastebin.

See above in my response to Faroth. The point I brought those up was to show you that there's a lot of nuance to statement that you didn't give credit to for WoW, but you have no issue doing it for FF14 (that's cold hearted bias). You even spoke in absolutes with regard to wow, but were willing to concede to more nuanced discussion regarding FF14, again, what appears to be rooted in bias. I knew that these examples weren't black and white, just like most examples aren't black and white. If I could get discussion started where people "jumped" to prove me wrong, it'd be almost hypocritically easy to demonstrate the same for WoW.

Its Regula you nerds. > Regula van Hydrus. I will forever be upset with Square about him. Don't really see to much of him, outside of the small amount of time together during the warring triad quests. Regardless, Regula isn't really evil. He's a lot like Gaius is that the means often justifies the end and that Garlemald is doing what is best for Hydaelyn. He's considered to be an honourable man, who is deeply loyal to Varis and to his troops.

I agree with Faroth. He didn't really have a redemption arc, he did what he thought was right. Nothing more. Your time with him really didn't change his thought process.

A redemption arc can be something as simple as a single moment. A single change of heart. Does that make it a good redemption arc? That's up for debate. The point was that he was previously an antagonist, then he was an ally in a single brief moment.

Man, back in Eorzea after a week in WoW has been an eye opener. The community in particular. Jesus christ did i actually forget how absolutely over the top rude the WoW EU community is. If i had a penny for every "fucking retards" or "dont tell me how to play cunts" i saw i would be ordering myself a goddamn papa jhons right about now.
You hear people go "but thats anecdotal" or "every game is as bad!" and no, fuck that noise. Its like new people came in, got used to the default being "asshole angry with a long customer service call" and dialled it up from there.

Then i get back on XIV and first dungeon is nothing but "hello, nice to meet you" type stuff and a wipe was "i'm sorry sorry" and "dont worry about it man it happens" and its like night and day. Mechanically both games offer good things and bad things. But either i've gotten used to XIV's nicer baseline attitude or the WoW community has gotten old and bitter.

I mean, you do KNOW it's a living FF14 meme about the you don't pay my sub remark right? Like your "example" is literally one of the most common responses people GENUINELY not even as a joke, respond with?

It's funny because so far my WoW experiences are similar to my FF14 experiences. Which is what I've stated since the beginning. Shitters shit in both games, and good pleasant people don't suck in both games. I do tend to have shittier players in FF14, but that's a nature of the game design not playerbase IMO. WoW lets me identify more easily who belongs in my group and who doesn't. FF14 doesn't.

[Faroth]

Nah, I'm with dope_danny, as is 4 others in my FC along with another RL friend who stopped playing all MMOs, and a good number of others. I see far FAR FAR less abusive trash talking rage in FFXIV and that's been my experience through continuous play since launch of ARR. Hands down, no question, not even close to WoW's current community experience. There are WAY WAAAAAAY too many former WoW players who explicitly talk about the night and day difference vs Wreck's claims that they're the same.

My negative experiences are usually from people who are calling others "shitty players" because their DPS isn't up to par or because they're screwing up mechanics (totally ignoring new player bonus, stating they're new, and seeing the fight for 2 attempts). We've kicked the one trash talking and raging like they're going to pop a blood vessel and have cleared the content every time. Only once did we run out of time and everyone left with compliments on the progress and confident the new person would get it the next time they queued up.

Mileage varies, but we're talking something like over 99% of people I know/talked to leaning towards dope_danny's experience, including a few who have never played MMOs being very happy with how the community welcomed them and eased them into healing.

Wreck is just cursed. I'm telling you, he's got an ex out there that cast a spell on him that he's always going to be plagued by inferior players to enrage him. Or maybe it's just the nature of being an top 5% raider forced to mingle with the "filthy casuals."

Still think getting bent out of shape over DPS meters in roulettes is begging for blood pressure issues, though.

[Resiak]

I mean, you do KNOW it's a living FF14 meme about the you don't pay my sub remark right? Like your "example" is literally one of the most common responses people GENUINELY not even as a joke, respond with?

It's funny because so far my WoW experiences are similar to my FF14 experiences. Which is what I've stated since the beginning. Shitters shit in both games, and good pleasant people don't suck in both games. I do tend to have shittier players in FF14, but that's a nature of the game design not playerbase IMO. WoW lets me identify more easily who belongs in my group and who doesn't. FF14 doesn't.

We've discussed this subject before, and what came out of it is that FF14 tends to have a nicer player base in the lower ends of the content, and once you get into the current end game stuff, you start to see more jerks. On the other hand, in WoW, the lower end content lfr and such, tends to have the jerks, while in higher end content, people are generally nicer.

This is what leads to some people having a skewed thought on this compared to the majority. If you prefer being at the top of the content curve, your going to see that nastier side of the player base. Likewise in wow, your going to see that better player base. But if you tend to play in lower difficulty content, which is a much larger part of the player base, your going to see a lot of nicer people, versus the toxicity that is wows lower end content.

For me, I know longer have the time, or even interest in pushing the top content. Those days are long gone. So in my experience, 14 blows away wow when it comes to player attitude.

[Kazgrel]

We're arguing anecdotes vs. anecdotes here, no matter how long many of us have been playing either this game or WoW. Extremely bad (or good) things tend to stick out in our minds. That's very much the case here, or in games in general; we always remember how we had a shitty party member in whatever dungeon the other day, or what particular boss gave us fits in a game (be it here or elsewhere).

Had a guy in Rabanastre either this past week or the week before start talking all kinds of shit because people were lagging/fucking up and that guy didn't like it and thus started in about how he was the best player in the entire group, etc., only to get promptly booted by the members of his alliance. We had just wiped on Hashbrown, and after replacing that particular turd, we went on to one shot the rest of the raid.

While I can't I recall specifics, I do remember having similar things happen in WoW's LFR during MoP, where if someone started showing their ass in raid chat, they would get the boot. There's no mistaking the fact that I've run into far more toxicity on WoW than I have here, but I'm also talking about a game I played for 10 years vs. a game I've played for 2.5 years. I've had a lot more opportunities to encounter assholes in WoW than I have here.

[Tavin]

Yo, hardcore wow player who's planning to get back to ffxiv lvling followed by raiding at the higest level, savage or whatever it was.

My main issue/question is that i see most 8 man (10?) Raids going with more or less a fixed setup, ninja, bard, machinist, dragoon. Some at most use a res mage.

If i want to do high end raiding (which i heard doesnt take that long to gear up to), will i be fine gearing up a red/black mage, or is it better of goimg with a bard/ninja/machinist etc?
Im a healer in wow, but in ffxiv it feels too weird :/