[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Sorrior]

There's nothing "challenging" right now. It's all artifically annoying. Tanks not having a taunt at low levels on fights with adds is just ducky. :-P That isn't "hard." That's just "stupid annoying so we can pretend it's "hard"."

Tanks DO have an AOE taunt just takes some getting used to and a don't fire a second after the tank mentality.

[Grevie]

Why? Why? I see alot of people asking for challenging content in low levels... why why...
i dont get it.... there is no mmo well. wow. gw2. whatever, outthere that puninsh the people in the face
at low levels. the balance is fine at low levels, people need to get use to with the game.... and still i see
people failing at mechanics, and that's fine people is enjoying the game and learning.

[TirielWoW]

Tanks DO have an AOE taunt just takes some getting used to and a don't fire a second after the tank mentality.

All I know is that as much as I wait for tanks to get threat, I always pick up the second or third or fourth add they're taking. By healing the tank. I don't really have the option of not healing him, as then he'd die, and then I'd die. But the fact that I'm constantly tanking adds is very frustrating. It's become a pattern. Didn't happen in the initial dungeons I did, but now it happens in every single one. I've even seen adds ignore the tank provoking them, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

Why? Why? I see alot of people asking for challenging content in low levels... why why...
i dont get it.... there is no mmo well. wow. gw2. whatever, outthere that puninsh the people in the face
at low levels. the balance is fine at low levels, people need to get use to with the game.... and still i see
people failing at mechanics, and that's fine people is enjoying the game and learning.

Not saying low level content has to be challenging at all. But, the fact that it's "challenging" due to issues with tanks at this level makes me worry about what it's going to be like at max level.

[sergel02]

Something that seems annoying is that it seems you don't get any credit for FATES if you zone out, like for a dungeon.

[Snow-Tiger]

All I know is that as much as I wait for tanks to get threat, I always pick up the second or third or fourth add they're taking. By healing the tank. I don't really have the option of not healing him, as then he'd die, and then I'd die. But the fact that I'm constantly tanking adds is very frustrating. It's become a pattern. Didn't happen in the initial dungeons I did, but now it happens in every single one. I've even seen adds ignore the tank provoking them, etc.

It's really the tanks problem that this is occurring with you, rather than the games design. It took me forever to get used to it when I tried out the tank classes, and it's definitely not a WoW system. You can compare this system to a situation in WoW where a tank uses a taunt on a boss. Say Tank B taunts off Tank A because of a debuff... if tank B proceeds to not hit the boss after taunting it, he still is going to lose that threat within a couple seconds to the other tank or someone else. That is how the AOE "provoke" works in this game, you can't just use it and expect all mobs to stay on you - you actually have to follow up with it on all mobs by tabbing and dealing damage to them after a couple hits on the primary mob.

When tanking in WoW, tanks have the 500% threat modifier on all damage dealt, in this game there's a couple skills that have an increased threat generation built in, but otherwise it's all about tabbing. The aoe provoke is an aoe increase in threat, not a specific "attack me now" ability. For tanks to keep the threat they gained with that aoe, they still need to tab across to every mob which very few seem to actually do in this game - likely from playing games like WoW where when you aoe once things stick to you.

So rather than a problem with low level tanks, it's pretty much a problem with people not being used to the system it's designed around. A tank needs to use their aoe provoke on the pull, hit the main mob a couple times, and then start tabbing to the others. It's built around tanks actually having to manage threat on each mob rather than just having everything passively stick to you with aoe skills. I think once tanks get the idea of how it's supposed to work things will get better, since as of now most tanks just don't tab across all the mobs and that's why healers or dps'ers that aoe are taking mobs.

Edit: I should mention that a couple of tanks in my Free Company on Beta that I run with at lvl35 dungeons are able to hold all mobs no matter how much aoe spam I use on my THM, even when I use +20% damage CD. I used to think it was a problem with tanks design when I did duty finder and had a problem in every dungeon, but after running with them it's clear it's just designed different and tanks need to play with a different mindset than a WoW mindset.

[7seti]

Pings seem to lower in instantiated dungeons (in Haukke Manor I get can get between 25ms and 50ms). But in any towns or populated area around Levemete NPCs, the ping is stuck at 259ms.

That's just... unacceptable. SE has the capital to have server farms in US West, US East and in Europe. Having all their servers/data center in Montreal, Canada is infuriating especially considering this is a subscription-based game.

Yoshi-P found the stupidest excuse as to why this game "needs" to come out on PS3 but he's oddly mum about why our pings are so high in a game where the min-maxing will revolve around performing your rotation in under 10 or 15 seconds to complement the temporary damage buffs you're getting from your abilities. With a crappy ping, this will not be possible and further worsens the issue of the 2.5s GCD.

Sorry, but I can't help but find this hilarious. Your "unacceptable" ping is normal for anyone living in the Oceanic region. Now you guys know what it's like

[TirielWoW]

It's really the tanks problem that this is occurring with you, rather than the games design. It took me forever to get used to it when I tried out the tank classes, and it's definitely not a WoW system. You can compare this system to a situation in WoW where a tank uses a taunt on a boss. Say Tank B taunts off Tank A because of a debuff... if tank B proceeds to not hit the boss after taunting it, he still is going to lose that threat within a couple seconds to the other tank or someone else. That is how the AOE "provoke" works in this game, you can't just use it and expect all mobs to stay on you - you actually have to follow up with it on all mobs by tabbing and dealing damage to them after a couple hits on the primary mob.

When tanking in WoW, tanks have the 500% threat modifier on all damage dealt, in this game there's a couple skills that have an increased threat generation built in, but otherwise it's all about tabbing. The aoe provoke is an aoe increase in threat, not a specific "attack me now" ability. For tanks to keep the threat they gained with that aoe, they still need to tab across to every mob which very few seem to actually do in this game - likely from playing games like WoW where when you aoe once things stick to you.

So rather than a problem with low level tanks, it's pretty much a problem with people not being used to the system it's designed around. A tank needs to use their aoe provoke on the pull, hit the main mob a couple times, and then start tabbing to the others. It's built around tanks actually having to manage threat on each mob rather than just having everything passively stick to you with aoe skills. I think once tanks get the idea of how it's supposed to work things will get better, since as of now most tanks just don't tab across all the mobs and that's why healers or dps'ers that aoe are taking mobs.

Edit: I should mention that a couple of tanks in my Free Company on Beta that I run with at lvl35 dungeons are able to hold all mobs no matter how much aoe spam I use on my THM, even when I use +20% damage CD. I used to think it was a problem with tanks design when I did duty finder and had a problem in every dungeon, but after running with them it's clear it's just designed different and tanks need to play with a different mindset than a WoW mindset.

That makes sense. I guess I'm just hitting the wall of people who aren't paying attention to whether I'm getting eaten or not. More often than not, I end up healing one of the two DPS who are tanking in place of the tank because the tank ignored the fact that my face was being melted by one or more mobs. Obv, I need a guild to get some good tanks. lol

[Snow-Tiger]

That makes sense. I guess I'm just hitting the wall of people who aren't paying attention to whether I'm getting eaten or not. More often than not, I end up healing one of the two DPS who are tanking in place of the tank because the tank ignored the fact that my face was being melted by one or more mobs. Obv, I need a guild to get some good tanks. lol

That wall exists with what seems like 99% of every queue lol. I actually rolled both tanks after getting upset at stealing mobs in 20+ dungeons in a row. Even then I thought it was a bad tank design and took me many many many dungeons to actually realize how it was supposed to work - I definitely had my healers faces eaten quite a few times when I first started. I picked up on it eventually though and now it's fairly easy to keep all the mobs and dpsers are free to aoe as much as they want. It'll be a learning experience for everyone, but I have no doubts healers and dps'ers faces are going to be eaten quite a lot the first few months this game is out. :P

Edit:

Would you guys recommend Lancer/Dragoon to someone who lives in Australia and is likely going to have latency issues. Due to the positional requirements and such.

Latency from just being there won't make or break anything as far as classes with position requirements go, it should be unnoticeable(not the latency itself, but whether or not your position is good should be unnoticeable). PvP would be an entirely different story, but that's going to be very very hard and strange for everyone with position requirements. Someone could have 0MS and it's still going to be impossible without using a stun - I'm really curious how they plan on working around this.

[Issalice]

Anyone else get the email from "Final Fantasy XIV B test Secretariat"? It was all in Japanese my mail client did an auto translate that is a mess. I followed the links and it said I had to register for B test.....I think, like I said bad translation. I also didn't get a registration code which it looks like I should have been sent.

[Snow-Tiger]

Anyone else get the email from "Final Fantasy XIV B test Secretariat"? It was all in Japanese my mail client did an auto translate that is a mess. I followed the links and it said I had to register for B test.....I think, like I said bad translation. I also didn't get a registration code which it looks like I should have been sent.

Yeah I think most people did, it was followed up later with an email that said they sent a japanese email to some people by mistake and it can safely be discarded. They apologized in the follow up email and said the first was just regarding the phase 3 schedule.

[Issalice]

Yeah I think most people did, it was followed up later with an email that said they sent a japanese email to some people by mistake and it can safely be discarded. They apologized in the follow up email and said the first was just regarding the phase 3 schedule.

Ah, ty. I never got the follow up email lol. Makes a lot more sense now.

[unholytestament]

Guess who just got a beta key!

I should probably read the last 30 or so pages I missed...

[Snow-Tiger]

Guess who just got a beta key!

I should probably read the last 30 or so pages I missed...

Awesome!
I kind of wish I got mine later, since I've grown attached now to my character and got 2 classes to the beta cap and all classes at least above 20 - and it's time to say goodbye and RIP to them come Sunday. I'll miss her!

[sergel02]

Would you guys recommend Lancer/Dragoon to someone who lives in Australia and is likely going to have latency issues. Due to the positional requirements and such.

Well as someone who just did Toto Rak as one, I wouldn't really. I live in California and the lag was pretty bad. I mean it's not impossible, i go positioning good quite a few times, but sometimes after you enter the command the mob will have moved already and you can't see till a second or two later. Melee seems to cause more lag then ranged for me.

About that dungeon, I liked that end boss. Hardest one yet. Dungeon took an hour, but was mostly because we didn't have a tank. He was there in the opening sequence with us but once it loaded he was gone. Still, we made it through two bosses with just me, a CNJ, and mage.

About threat, i didn't have any problem holding threat even with a THM and cnj casting Medica. Flash is great, and I used Savage blade while the rest slept.

[Mavecryst]

Yeah I'm also very interested in this point. I don't know how many stuns Dragoons have but if you balance an entire class' DPS around being able to attack from the back/side then that class will do 25-50% less damage than other classes in PvP.

They have 2 stuns I believe, the minimum cd on which is 60seconds. There was a discussion thread somewhere in the beta forums about melee classes being kited to death by range classes, particularly Archer in PvP and how much of a problem it will be. I get the feeling at the moment PvP is of very little importance to SE, considering most of their replies to the public centre around PvE issues though.

I like the combat, but there's a massive amount of room for improvement. There's no interrupts, no reflexive skills, procs aren't utilised properly, hardly any gap closers (yet there's gap openers)...some stuff that should be standard but isn't in this game. I won't be going anywhere near PvP till they fix some of that at least, particularly gap closers.

A dragoon has 1 jump type ability that functions as a gap closer, however the cd I believe is 2 mins or maybe longer? That's ridiculous. The Archer can cast his slow on a 30s cd (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the main idea here is that the difference in cooldowns are silly - gap closers won't really work well). Casters, like the Conjurer have slows attached to their spells. So every 2 minutes, the dragoon gets to close in, pull off maaaaybe 2 skills, before going back to being kited to death.

[Snow-Tiger]

Well as someone who just did Toto Rak as one, I wouldn't really. I live in California and the lag was pretty bad. I mean it's not impossible, i go positioning good quite a few times, but sometimes after you enter the command the mob will have moved already and you can't see till a second or two later. Melee seems to cause more lag then ranged for me.

Yeah this is also true, it's something you'll just have to judge yourself. Some people who live in a low MS area are even ending up with pretty sizable lag delays in certain situations even when the MS doesn't reflect it. If you go by the MS alone though, someone living in a far away say 400MS location really won't notice any big problem for positioning. If you're one that gets those random spikes though it may pose a problem, since those are easily 1000-2000MS spikes. Really your location won't determine if your able to play the class, but rather if you're a person that gets frequent spikes of lag or not - which can happen to anyone at any location.

Have to agree about that boss too. It's neat how fights can change based on your comp. When I did it a few times on my THM I was able to just sleep every add and we could tunnel the boss. That kept me very entertained as it actually required paying attention to every mobs sleep timer. I switch over to a new group with no THM and we end up having to kill each add to make it through the fight. I like that there's options when it comes to fights like this depending on your comp.

[Lillpapps]

Pings seem to lower in instantiated dungeons (in Haukke Manor I get can get between 25ms and 50ms). But in any towns or populated area around Levemete NPCs, the ping is stuck at 259ms.

If you are talking about the values at the top of the screen then they are not ping. They are data sent / recieved. By logic it would be higher in towns or populated area's since more data is sent to you. It has nothing to do with your latency though.

[Kheg]

Yeah I'm also very interested in this point. I don't know how many stuns Dragoons have but if you balance an entire class' DPS around being able to attack from the back/side then that class will do 25-50% less damage than other classes in PvP.

There will be separate skills for PvP!

[FobManX]

Did anyone else get this error message when trying to register for the beta:

The entered code has already been registered.

Sent em an e-mail, apparently there are some others who've had the same issue.

[sergel02]

I played through the 1-15 class quests for LNC, CNJ, Archer, PUG, and MAR, and the level 5 MAR quest was definitely the most fun; the one with the megalocrabs. I thought it was a story quest because of the cutscene. The fight was decently challenging and the battle music was great. I'm wondering if any of the other ones are like that.