[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Dugna]

servers seem to be letting people back in, excal got a que of a thousand or so, but if it gets me back in then so be it

[dope_danny]

Well i finished the norvrandt intro and saw the first cutscene where someone turns into a sin eater. That was fucking horrifying.

[Merie]

Got Gunbreaker to 70 finished up job quests about to jump into ShB proper and the servers decided to get drunk.

Gunbreaker is a hoot though, lots of stuff to press all the time.

How do you level so fast? Especially with the queues gummed up by lack of healers.

[dope_danny]

Calling it a night, not even 71 after spending all day on DNC/GUN but i did one of the intro MSQ sections and now i'm no the other and boy does this feel a whole lot more like Heavensward than Stormblood.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Okay so I have to absolutely dumpster SE for this launch. Ended up with my launcher chain-crashing all day and ultimately me saying screw it and reinstalling the entire game. And honestly, I'm not convinced this will fix the problem. Everyting I read says I need to buy a VPN to install the expansion.

At least Blizzard can patch their games well.

[Aruhen]

The story is great so far. Pretty creepy at times too such as the very early stuff in Lakeland...and the first dungeon geezus. Black Mage is freaking awesome too now with the new traits.

[Isilarya]

Okay so I have to absolutely dumpster SE for this launch. Ended up with my launcher chain-crashing all day and ultimately me saying screw it and reinstalling the entire game. And honestly, I'm not convinced this will fix the problem. Everyting I read says I need to buy a VPN to install the expansion.

At least Blizzard can patch their games well.

I had a struggle for 15 minutes at 5am when it first went live, then some 3pm ish ddos bullshit that lasted about an hour. Thats the grand total of shit that went wrong on launch day. Sounds like a issue affecting a miniscule amount of players because this is the first im hearing or it, wasnt said in world chats, linkshells or fc.

[Yoshingo]

The launch was absolutely fantastic, smoothest it's ever been. The story is great thusfar, the music is legitimately fantastic (I didn't think they could outdo Heavensward but they're doing it), the dungeons I've done so far are really good, and I'm very much enjoying the changes to my job.

Played for a good 8-9 hours since launch, halfway to 73, and I'm just having a blast. It's such a nice change of pace from 8.2.

[Advent]

The only complaint I have is not having an option to turn off their version of vsync. I loaded in with horrible stuttering due to this, and it took me quite a while to figure it out. I basically had to turn off gsync and enable fullscreen mode (Terrible) so I can have smooth framerates. This, more than anything, could use a fix. And soon.

[Aruhen]

Yeah the music is fantastic, especially Il Mheg. Level 71 dungeon was fantastic too, great atmosphere and pretty fun final boss.

[Yoshingo]

I've loved the zone music - But I feel the general combat music is a little off this expansion. Don't get me wrong, it's a bop, but it doesn't feel like combat music to me.

But of course, that's entirely my opinion and people are welcome to feel different. I loved the music in the first dungeon, all of the zone music is great thus far - The general combat music just feels jarring to me.

I love the edgyboi combat music :P

I wasn't the biggest fan of the far eastern theme of Stormblood (I mean it was fine but subjectively I'm not a huge fan of that aesthetic so Heavensward always beat out Stormblood for me), so I really love how different this is compared to that.

[Aruhen]

If anything Shadowbringers really reminds me a bit of ARR but it mostly feels completely different than anything we've seen so far. I love it for that.

[StrawberryZebra]

Yeah, SCH is going to be boring as hell to level as, probably level as a SMN to level SCH.

This is how I've always done it. Though I am slightly concerned this time around that I've not found a vendor that sells gear anywhere, I don't want to be using level 70 gear for higher level dungeons, it'll be a huge burden to put onto your group as a healer.

From the looks of it, they're trying to give Scholar it's own version of the Bahamut summon for healing. Which is a cool idea to be sure, but I'm doubtful as to how it's going to work in practice. The downside is that now, unless I'm missing something, both of the faries are the same?

They have tried to improve Disipation, which is handy, it was always a bit of a weak cooldown. I don't think it's anything brilliant now, but it's better than it was at least.

Otherwise it looks, mostly, like business as usual for Scholar.

How do you level so fast?

I've been wondering about this as well. I was repeatedly passing level 70+ Dancers on my server within hours of Shadowbringers being live. I get the feeling that I'm missing something major here.

[Dugna]

From the looks of it, they bumped the exp HoH gives so people are blazing through 60-70 by just spamming it, some casually spam and get to 70 in 6 hrs or so some earlier if a dedicated group goes through.

[Remilia]

This is how I've always done it. Though I am slightly concerned this time around that I've not found a vendor that sells gear anywhere, I don't want to be using level 70 gear for higher level dungeons, it'll be a huge burden to put onto your group as a healer.

From the looks of it, they're trying to give Scholar it's own version of the Bahamut summon for healing. Which is a cool idea to be sure, but I'm doubtful as to how it's going to work in practice. The downside is that now, unless I'm missing something, both of the faries are the same?

They have tried to improve Disipation, which is handy, it was always a bit of a weak cooldown. I don't think it's anything brilliant now, but it's better than it was at least.

Otherwise it looks, mostly, like business as usual for Scholar.

Dissipation hasn't been on my hot bar since it first appeared, :P

Healing wise, yeah, Scholar hasn't changed much. Seraphim is a cooldown that kind of makes more sense in 8m/24m than it does in a 4m dungeon most likely.

[Icaras]

Launch was (a little) mixed for me. When me and Nasriel went to log in, we had queues (Tonberrry JP) of around 400 something, took around 15/20 minutes to get in (I decided to do my dishes while waiting and finished JUST as I got through the queue, haha).

We messed around a bit, put most of my collected mats to sell (I won't be doing crafting or gathering for a bit, so figured I'd just recollect what I need when I get back to them) and unlocked Gunbreaker.

Was doing the quest and was just about to kill the last "boss" of the 1st quests instance scenario, when I DCed. I tried to login right away, but was placed at the back of the queue (Which I felt was a little unfair of the system. I got DCed, I didn't choose to log out), and was faced with a queued of 1700 something.

I think it took nearly an hour to get back in, managed a leveling roulette and then as it was late we decided to log off. I was messing around looking at the Idleshire vendors when I DCed again *sigh* (NOTE: Nas didn't DC at all, so I figure it was something on my end).

Today we played for a good 2 hours and no DCs at all. So far I'm liking Gunbreaker, I can even recognize some animations from squall and Seifer (and some move names, such as Seifer No Mercy...which doesn't operate the same as his, but the references is appreciated).
Nas wanted to change to a Viera, but so far hasn't been able too as the server load when we've played means the main log in can't load/display our characters and this apparently prevents fantasias from working (or so she tells me)

[Merie]

I like it. I LOVE what they did to Samurai, with the buffs lasting longer and allowing them to be refreshed by aoe rotation. I also like that they removed half of the tank cooldowns for my Paladin. Did we really need over a dozen cooldowns?? I couldn't fit them all on my dualshock r1-->r2/r2-->r1 crossbar setup before now. I also like the story, even though it detracts from what had been built up as an all out war with the Empire at the end of Stormblood only to backtrack it to go a completely different direction.

Though I didn't like what they did with Minfilia's character, basically making her the Zelda of Final Fantasy. I was hoping they would leave her as the last scion you find, in the final zone, your reunion beckoning you all throughout the story line until it was near its zenith. I liked her character and I miss her. I'm also disappointed we didn't get to see the twins reunite as it had to happen off camera on account of the time difference. Would have been a touching moment though.

[Advent]

Sounds like your graphics card more than anything.

I played in fullscreen-windowed and didn't have any stuttering issues. Didn't have to turn anything on/off.

I doubt my 1080 is having sudden issues related to itself. considering no other game cause that kind of stuttering. I believe it is directly related to them having capped the frame rate lower than my monitor's native refresh rate, and how that negatively interacts with Gsync panels.

[Dugna]

I doubt my 1080 is having sudden issues related to itself. considering no other game cause that kind of stuttering. I believe it is directly related to them having capped the frame rate lower than my monitor's native refresh rate, and how that negatively interacts with Gsync panels.

yeah they did comment something about capping the frames even on unlimited in fear of people complaining about their systems being to hot and complaning to SE.

[Isilarya]

From the looks of it, they bumped the exp HoH gives so people are blazing through 60-70 by just spamming it, some casually spam and get to 70 in 6 hrs or so some earlier if a dedicated group goes through.

Its a combination of that and the job changes, they didnt really rebalance anything in there i leveled GUN and id just pull the entire floor to the portal and then a DNC would kill everything in like 2-3 gcds.