[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[SkagenRora]

Nice meme, no really I find that quite amusing.

Yup, Final fantasy is a meme and a quite amusing one. Glad that we agrer.

[Hyral]

Yup, Final fantasy is a meme and a quite amusing one. Glad that we agrer.

Chill, bud. Your bait is getting you some replies, no need to get worked up that you start misspelling things. You'll get your replies.

[lollerlaban]

Because FF-XIV is pretty much a WoW clone with better gfx and way more interesting plot?
And catgirls. Obviously.

Funsies aside: the last thing I want is for the game to become faster. Many may enjoy the twitch gameplay, I do not. In fact, for me, many of the reaction times required are already frustratingly short with even a seconds hesitation being punished by an instagib. I want more dynamic stuff, more "thinking on your feet and improvising/strategy" and less "yo, react super fast and mash buttons super fast or your die!".

Yeah, I'll show myself out. <_<

Better graphics? That's really debateable when you start to look at stuff like the Ultimate weapons which are pixelated messes

[SkagenRora]

Chill, bud. Your bait is getting you some replies, no need to get worked up that you start misspelling things. You'll get your replies.

Tbh, I often get these "Your message is bait/Troll" But it's really not.. I never intend to write something controversial or "Wrong", I just share my own opinions and thoughts on the matter.

Sorry if this comes off as any thing other than that, It's really not my intention, and i never want to be perceived as a troll.

[Ghostile]

Yet Shadowbringers blows everything WoW has ever had (except for the pvp) out of the water, not even WotLK was as solid as that expansion. Sure, WoW does a lot of good shit with their game, the PVP for example is vastly superior to any MMO out there.

And it sounds like you're a pretty new WoW player because if you had been around from the start then you would've known that WoW copypasted entire systems made from older mmos and just made them more polished, it's not at all "wow's systems"
Where do you think WoW's idea of scaling came from? Games like GW2 and ESO ofc

Some thousand hours in both wow and ffxiv, and id be lying if I said ffxiv felt better.
Dumb button bloat, absolutely no options in gearing, no 4 Man content, everything is puggable.

I like the idea of housing and gold saucer tho

[Nasuuna]

Some thousand hours in both wow and ffxiv, and id be lying if I said ffxiv felt better.
Dumb button bloat, absolutely no options in gearing, no 5 Man content, everything is puggable.

I like the idea of housing and gold saucer tho

the responsiveness is the bigger one for me, but the actual flow of combat feels so much better.

And I'd LOVE difficult 4 man content

[StrawberryZebra]

God I wish I could do the same, because this game seems to compel me to tunnel vision the UI instead of the boss, and I get hit by stuff constantly, even after 5 years.

I would offer to share the ones I made, but they're very specific in how they function. You'd need to to have your UI set up in the same way as I have and your skills on the same keys as I do. They're set up to overlap keys on my hotbars by moving another hotbar over the top so the icons overlay, and changing the keybinding to that new key acordingly. They're essentially brute forcing the existing UI components to function how I'd like them to.

You would also need to be playing a Scholar. Which may or may not be the case.

They are something that could be tweaked to work for other Jobs and UI layouts, but since they don't have a GUI interface, you'd have to dig into the scripts yourself and work out how to change it yourself from there. I'm sure you're more than capable of learning, but I don't think I'd be doing you any favours by dumping a load of spaghetti code on you and expecting you to work it out yourself.

I think the fairy gauge and aetherflow have alright synergy. It's like DKs where you mainly spend runes and through that build runic power for fillers. Maybe I feel different about it because I consider aetherflow to be the main focus and the fairy gauge just a bonus you build up to use as filler.

The biggest issue is that the gameplay loop just doesn't function well at all;

You spend MP to deal damage/heal => Recover MP with Aetherflow => Use Aetherflow stacks for Healing/Damage => Use Fairy Gauge for healing

You recover MP at step 2, then don't need to spend it for steps 3 and 4, meaning you don't need to circle back to step 2 and are stuck in step 1 for the majority of the fight. When it comes to spending the gauge, Fey Union is a slightly better version of Embrace, and Fey Blessing is a worse version of Whispering Dawn. So you almost never need to get to step 4, spending the gauge.

You end up in a situation where you're not spending the Gauge, and are still slowly building it further. Thats why it doesn't feel like an organic part of the Job, it's completely unnessacary and only offers minor improvements over what your Fairy already does by default with some clunky extra steps involved.

[Hyral]

The biggest issue is that the gameplay loop just doesn't function well at all;

You spend MP to deal damage/heal => Recover MP with Aetherflow => Use Aetherflow stacks for Healing/Damage => Use Fairy Gauge for healing

You recover MP at step 2, then don't need to spend it for steps 3 and 4, meaning you don't need to circle back to step 2 and are stuck in step 1 for the majority of the fight. When it comes to spending the gauge, Fey Union is a slightly better version of Embrace, and Fey Blessing is a worse version of Whispering Dawn. So you almost never need to get to step 4, spending the gauge.

You end up in a situation where you're not spending the Gauge, and are still slowly building it further. Thats why it doesn't feel like an organic part of the Job, it's completely unnessacary and only offers minor improvements over what your Fairy already does by default with some clunky extra steps involved.

Oh I think I get you now. It's not so much that the system is bad, it's that the system doesn't work with the current design, where we are just dpsing all the time (and that fairy gauge heals are underwhelming). Aetherflow heals are enough to do most of our healing and then go back to dpsing, so we never really need to spend the gauge.

I would do the opposite of what your previous post suggested though. I would leave MP for dps/healing with regular spells, Aetherflow for stronger heals, and use the gauge for stronger DPS. You build aetherflow stacks, spend stacks on healing to get fairy gauge, and instead of going back to step 1 as it is now you spend the gauge on DPS. So you are a healer that unlocks fancier dps spells as you heal, rather than a dps that unlocks healing spells as you fight.

[Advent]

I would offer to share the ones I made, but they're very specific in how they function. You'd need to to have your UI set up in the same way as I have and your skills on the same keys as I do. They're set up to overlap keys on my hotbars by moving another hotbar over the top so the icons overlay, and changing the keybinding to that new key acordingly. They're essentially brute forcing the existing UI components to function how I'd like them to.

You would also need to be playing a Scholar. Which may or may not be the case.

Well no, I definitely don't play a scholar. Or any healer for that matter.

They are something that could be tweaked to work for other Jobs and UI layouts, but since they don't have a GUI interface, you'd have to dig into the scripts yourself and work out how to change it yourself from there. I'm sure you're more than capable of learning, but I don't think I'd be doing you any favours by dumping a load of spaghetti code on you and expecting you to work it out yourself.

How different is it to LUA? I can't say I'm proficient in scripting or code, but I did dabble with messing around with some html stuff in wow, and it might be fun to figure out how it works through trial and error. I kind of always wanted to learn programming, but never found a suitable outlet for it in gaming so I haven't bothered.

[Granyala]

You end up in a situation where you're not spending the Gauge, and are still slowly building it further. Thats why it doesn't feel like an organic part of the Job, it's completely unnessacary and only offers minor improvements over what your Fairy already does by default with some clunky extra steps involved.

Glad I'm not the only one that feels that way.
I only played SCH briefly to level it but found the whole gauge thing so awkward to use.

[TriHard]

Nothing shadowbringers do can make up for the global cooldown or bloated ability bar.

Until they fix the 40 (exaggeration i know) ability rotation then everything else is just null & void. Make the gameplay fun first.

I can agree with the fact that there's way too much shit to click, this is an issue I have with the game as well, especially gunbreaker that has 3-4 different "reduce dmg taken" cooldowns and certain dps jobs that have a lot of the same shit.

As for the global cooldown, while it would be nice for it to be as quick as WoW, I highly doubt that'll ever be changed as the entire game is designed around that long GCD

[Hyral]

especially gunbreaker that has 3-4 different "reduce dmg taken" cooldowns and certain dps jobs that have a lot of the same shit.

Part of that is also the role actions. I think they are a hold over from a previous system, cross skills, that would let you learn an ability on one job and carry it over to another.

But at this point where all tank jobs have two personal DR cooldowns, an invul, an aoe DR cooldown, a support mitigation to buff the MT when they OT, and their own flavor of mitigation on a short CD (paladins get shield block, dark knights an absorb, warriors a choice between DR or lifesteal, etc) the role actions are redundant and definitely skill bloat.

They are nice for clearing dungeons fast, though. Just rotating cooldowns with wall to wall pulls, but even then you still don't use all of them all the time.

[StrawberryZebra]

How different is it to LUA?

LUA tends to run scripts within other applications, which is why it's tends to be used for Addons and for applications that support user created content.

I used Ruby to make an overlay that can present information over the game UI, and had it use the in game text commands to use abilities and had it move and resize UI elements in response to key presses. I've then moved those UI elements off the visable screen and used the addon to move them back when it's finished. I also used the same overlay to add various other bits of information too.

Honestly, it's far from an elegant solution. I've had to put where to move things to the pixel, where to move them back to when done. It works specifically for Scholar abilities, provided they're on the same hotbar and keybindings as I use and you're using a UK keyboard layout. If I were to press a key and the ability not trigger then it throws almost everything out of sync.

It's a complete bodge job, truth be told. It works, but you can see all the duct tape holding it together.

I'm not sure if it's something Squenix are going to pick up as being against their TOS or not. I've used it for about a week with no reprecussions, but I can't say if they're going to be able to detect it or not.

I would do the opposite of what your previous post suggested though. I would leave MP for dps/healing with regular spells, Aetherflow for stronger heals, and use the gauge for stronger DPS. You build aetherflow stacks, spend stacks on healing to get fairy gauge, and instead of going back to step 1 as it is now you spend the gauge on DPS. So you are a healer that unlocks fancier dps spells as you heal, rather than a dps that unlocks healing spells as you fight.

I would argue that, if any job should be spending their gauge on offensive abilities for their pet, it should be Summoner.

What you're saying isn't wrong, it would create a better play pattern, but it's not one that belongs on Scholar imo.

I only played SCH briefly to level it but found the whole gauge thing so awkward to use.

The one positive thing I can say about it - It's at least better than it was in Stormblood. Though that isn't a high bar to pass. Honestly, I'm leveling up a couple of other Jobs, I'm really not thrilled about the Scholar.

[Hyral]

I would argue that, if any job should be spending their gauge on offensive abilities for their pet, it should be Summoner.

What you're saying isn't wrong, it would create a better play pattern, but it's not one that belongs on Scholar imo.

I despise that both jobs will forever be looked at in a compare and contrast manner because of their roots. Whatever happens to Summoner I think it should have absolutely no bearing on Scholar, specially now that they seem to really want to separate their identity.

If I were to change anything for Summoner is to actually make it a Summoner. FF games Summoners don't usually just walk around with a pet and make it cast spells for the entire fight (Except some specific fights in FFX) rather they summon different monsters throughout the fight each to cast whatever their signature abilities are. Summoners should be constantly drawing different egi for different attacks instead of just pulling the melee/aoe/tank pet and sitting with it forever. The way summoners build resources to get Bahamut and then Phoenix reminds me more of the traditional job than than the whole egi thing. But that's as mostly an observer since the gameplay has really turned me away from playing the job. Now if Savage or other harder content actually does require the job to constantly summon their different egi that's cool, but otherwise nothing ever encourages you to do that outside end game. It doesn't feel like a Summoner at all to me.

Edit: Besides, if SMN was made to build resources to actually summon different things throughout the fight that would free up the WoW Hunter playstyle for Beastmasters to be added as a proper pet job!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I despise that both jobs will forever be looked at in a compare and contrast manner because of their roots. Whatever happens to Summoner I think it should have absolutely no bearing on Scholar, specially now that they seem to really want to separate their identity.

If I were to change anything for Summoner is to actually make it a Summoner. FF games Summoners don't usually just walk around with a pet and make it cast spells for the entire fight (Except some specific fights in FFX) rather they summon different monsters throughout the fight each to cast whatever their signature abilities are. Summoners should be constantly drawing different egi for different attacks instead of just pulling the melee/aoe/tank pet and sitting with it forever. The way summoners build resources to get Bahamut and then Phoenix reminds me more of the traditional job than than the whole egi thing. But that's as mostly an observer since the gameplay has really turned me away from playing the job. Now if Savage or other harder content actually does require the job to constantly summon their different egi that's cool, but otherwise nothing ever encourages you to do that outside end game. It doesn't feel like a Summoner at all to me.

Edit: Besides, if SMN was made to build resources to actually summon different things throughout the fight that would free up the WoW Hunter playstyle for Beastmasters to be added as a proper pet job!

I think the permanent pet thing is because they are trying to capture the fantasy most people think of when they think "Final Fantasy summoner": Yuna, from FFX. Her summons weren't one off cutscene attacks, but were effectively party members.

The problem is that FFXIV's implementation of that fantasy is half hearted. In FFX, the summons are big and imposing, and deal a lot of damage. In FFXIV, the summons are tiny not very cool, and they hit like a wet noodle. 99% of the time you're rolling with Ifrit. You very rarely go with Garuda unless you're going to face a lot of mobs for a while. There is absolutely no reason to summon Titan whatsoever; he's worthless even in outdoor content and the singleplayer instances, taking up too much time to heal. You're better off just using Ifrit and trying to out DPS your enemies.

[StrawberryZebra]

But that's as mostly an observer since the gameplay has really turned me away from playing the job.

-snip-

Edit: Besides, if SMN was made to build resources to actually summon different things throughout the fight that would free up the WoW Hunter playstyle for Beastmasters to be added as a proper pet job!

The gameplay is a walking disaster. It's clunky, unclear and relies on exploiting some of the engine shortfalls to get the most out of it. You also have 4 different phases of your DPS, and there's a massive burden of knowledge required to get the most out of Bahamut and Phoenix. That's not a healthy Job design.

In my opinion, they need to scrap almost everything and start again with it. Clear up that messy confusing design and remove all those messy mechanics and ideas that are still a part of the job.

If it were up to me, I would push it firmly into a Pet DPS Job right from the outset. I'd still keep a couple of Summoner spells too, but the majority of the gameplay would be in controlling your Summon and ordering it to perform attacks rather than the Summoner casting themselves. I do like the cyclical gameplay the Summoner has, where you build up to a beefy super summon that functions as a highpoint in the rotation, so I would look to preserve that.

What I would do then is increase the number of Summoned Egi available, and I would give each of them their own unique set of charges and their own Power Bar. When the bar is depeleted, the Egi is unsummoned. The Summoner can then summon their next Egi and it lasts until it's power bar is depleted and so on.

In terms of Egi, I'd have Garuda, Ramuh and Leviathan as the AoE Egi. Ifrit, Shiva and Ravana would be the single target Egi. Titan and Moogle King would be available as a more support orentated Egi you could summon if needed. Each would have a short cooldown to prevent you from resummoning it twice in a row, with the idea being that you'd cycle between your pets depending on the situation and what you needed at that moment.

I'd give each of Egi those their own Enkindle, Devotion and Egi Assaults, and would give those abilities their own power costs. The summoner would have abilities to reduce or increase the costs of those abilities if they wanted to keep a specific pet out for longer or if they wanted to quickly cycle through them.

Bahamut and Phoenix would be able to be summoned and controlled in the same way as other Egi, but would require you to have cycled through 3/4/5/6, whatever number works well for balance, Egi first in order to summon them. They'd still be the high point of the rotation that you build towards.

This would put it firmly into being the pet Job. While I appreciate that you would like a seperate Beastmaster Job, I consider the summoner to be the more iconic and most widely represented of the two. I think the Summoner would fill the niche better from a thematic and mechanical standpoint, they've traditionally been the Job that kills things with great big Fire Gods and Dragons.

There are, perhaps, ways a Beastmaster could be differentiated. Maybe they can have multiple pets at once? Perhaps they do the whole Druid thing where they transform into a beast and gain access to appropriate combat abilities? I'm not saying the Job couldn't work - Only that the Summoner should be the Job focused around having strong singular pets.

The problem is that FFXIV's implementation of that fantasy is half hearted.

I don't think it's half hearted as much as it suffered from unclear design intentions. Part of that is sharing the same base class as the Scholar, part of it is the way the job changes how it plays dramatically every 10 levels past 50. It's obvious that the direction they've wanted to take the Summoner has changed throughout each expansion.

Thats why I described it as a Frankenstein of a Job - It's a collision of different visions and ideas all sewn together.

From Stormblood onwards it's had more of a clear identity, that of a pet job, which is a good step forward. But it's still burdened by the weight of it's previous itterations and the results are.... Awkward.

A Pet job, with an emhasis on DoTs and casting burst windows just isn't a coherant design.

In single player FF titles, Summoners have always been at their best when they combine being a Summoner with something else too. Yuna, Dagger and Eiko were all Summoner/White Mage hybrids, Rydia was a Summoner/Black Mage. When the Summoner job functions alone, it tends to run into a lot of identity issues being a slightly different variation of the Black Mage to capitalise on elemental weakensess.

[Delever]

Yet Shadowbringers blows everything WoW has ever had (except for the pvp) out of the water, not even WotLK was as solid as that expansion. Sure, WoW does a lot of good shit with their game, the PVP for example is vastly superior to any MMO out there.

And it sounds like you're a pretty new WoW player because if you had been around from the start then you would've known that WoW copypasted entire systems made from older mmos and just made them more polished, it's not at all "wow's systems"
Where do you think WoW's idea of scaling came from? Games like GW2 and ESO ofc

4k hours into FFXIV been playing since ARR. What exactly did ShB bring that blew everything WoW has ever had other than the phenomenal story telling? Because content wise its one of the most stale expansions ever so far. I bought into the hype, the marketing for the expansion made it seem like the next best thing after sliced bread. The story had my jaw drop but after that.... I m waiting to give 5.3 a try and if the content is still a weeks worth of content I m pretty sure I wont stay subbed. It was the only game that managed to take me away from WoW for 4 years straight (only took a small break in stormblood cause of army time) but I really thought all that money it made would go somewhere... More raid bosses, new systems, better progression systems, large forms of content.
Instead I m getting ARR shiva synced to 80 while I wait another 3.5 months for 4 new raid bosses.
Lets not over exagerate things. WoW might be going through a rough time but its not because of lack of content. Blizzard pined down the content formula in legion. WoWs biggest negative right now is that they went overboard with the extra systems that they put in regarding itemization. Having extra sources of getting gear that you can play at any point throughout the week (aka torghast, mythic+) is amazing. Having to get essences+corruptions+azerite traits while all except the essences are random in order to be on par with everyone else.... kinda sucks.

[KrayZ33]

I agree, when it comes to amount of content, I'd say WoW does a better job. The quality isn't bad either or better in FFXIV.
I'd say WoW beats FFXIV by quite a margin in that regard.

It's more or less the system surrounding that content I'm not enjoying when it comes to WoW.
But the simple idea of M+ for example beats pretty much everything FFXIV throws at us.

[Hyral]

-snip-

I'd give each of Egi those their own Enkindle, Devotion and Egi Assaults, and would give those abilities their own power costs. The summoner would have abilities to reduce or increase the costs of those abilities if they wanted to keep a specific pet out for longer or if they wanted to quickly cycle through them.

All of that is great and what I expected from the job back when I started playing, having to summon multiple egi throughout the fight. If the egi must stay in the field that's fine I just have an issue with them staying forever when not even in FFX that was the default, with some bosses even being able to banish Yuna's summons after one turn.

To add to that I think Enkindle should be like a dismiss, as is normal for summons to do a big signature flashy attack before leaving the field, and it could work like Confiteor on PLD in that you could end the duration sooner if you so wished to in order to cycle through summons faster, or time it right at the end for extra damage. I just feel it would add good flavour, something exciting to build towards.

Otherwise, all of that is pretty much I wanted from summoner and the current iteration is just weird to me. Which sucks cause I would love to play the job.

This would put it firmly into being the pet Job. While I appreciate that you would like a seperate Beastmaster Job, I consider the summoner to be the more iconic and most widely represented of the two. I think the Summoner would fill the niche better from a thematic and mechanical standpoint, they've traditionally been the Job that kills things with great big Fire Gods and Dragons.

There are, perhaps, ways a Beastmaster could be differentiated. Maybe they can have multiple pets at once? Perhaps they do the whole Druid thing where they transform into a beast and gain access to appropriate combat abilities? I'm not saying the Job couldn't work - Only that the Summoner should be the Job focused around having strong singular pets.

I don't think there's a clash here, really. The proposed changes still leave space for BST to be the one pet job. And I mean literally one pet. As in the SMN fantasy is cycling and managing multiple powerful egis while BST would focus on having one pet throughout the fight, kind of how Hunters in WoW work, and some abilities would summon extra beasts only as part of the attack's animation but not keep them on the field.

It was just an idea though. If I'm honest I'm convinced BST will be a limited job where you go around collecting pets like BLU collects spells, and in the end will never amount to anything.

[Granyala]

I like summoners phases and temporary summons very much. They feel great, Bahamut going Akh Morn is awesome and they change the playstyle somewhat.

The permanent pet and the spamming of low level pet skills can die in a dumpsterfire, as far as I am concerned.