[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Merie]

5.3 MSQ spoilers

holy shit

Spoiler: 

@4:59:00, when Y'shtola is talking to Runar... is this possibly the sound? THE Sound?

I went back to watch the 5.2 cutscene, where Urianger lost concentration and fell into the water, and you hear a very similar sound when Urianger walked on water! Moments later, Thancred has a dizzy spell, but you don't hear a sound. I think this must be deliberate; Urianger didn't lose concentration because the link between his body and soul was weakening, but because he heard the Sound! @59:20

Alisae hears the Sound too in 5.3. @40:40

In 4.5, Master Matoya's magic broomsticks just randomly stopped working. Remember, Hythlodaeus said that anything that was in range of the sound began to warp, and that the magic of the Ancient's stopped working. Makes sense; the Ancients were far stronger magicians, so their magics would have been more resistant. With broomstick magics being casted by far weaker beings, the magics could have been disrupted before people could even begin hearing the sound.

EDIT: I'm guessing that Zenos and/or Fandaniel are tied to the source of the Sound. Setting aside how already wonky Zenos seems to be, he has been described as a beast twice this patch: once by Elidibus in the solo duty (Elidibus not being able to comprehend Zenos' true nature, much like how it seems the Ancients don't really know what the Source of the Sound is all about), and again by G'raha Tia in the 5.3 ending narration. The monsters spawned by the Terminus event during the Final Days were repeatedly described as beasts as well.

Also, you have Fandaniel. His pink soul crystal records his dialogue during Zodiark's summoning, and it appears that something went very wrong. Considering how the Source of the Sound warped creation magics, I'm guessing that during the summoning of Zodiark, something went wrong and Fandaniel got screwed up somehow.

https://youtu.be/gbXnegiO_zw?t=805

[dope_danny]

Boy only the second week and already that nier raid is a cakewalk, it took at least 3 to get the carries out the way last time.

[Katchii]

Considering that Ninjas are supposed to be STEALTHY... yeah I always found their particle effects and animations quite hilarious.

Agreed, but anime ninjas are anything but stealthy, their more common theme is super agile, flashy and quick movements. SE clearly took considerable inspiration from Naruto and other anime like it.

Which I can't necessarily fault them for, considering the vast majority of the game play for combat classes is combat, stealth isn't really a mechanic or theme that would present itself well.

[dope_danny]

i hate to say it but i think the Dwarf beast tribe questline is better written than the NieR one is.

[Granyala]

i hate to say it but i think the Dwarf beast tribe questline is better written than the NieR one is.

I don't think this second part of the Nier Questline was "written" at all. Basically nothing happened.
Ugh. We were all pretty disappointed in both: the story developments (or lack thereof) and the raid itself that seemed somewhat soulless.
"Here, smash a few random mobs to get your coín".

[dope_danny]

I don't think this second part of the Nier Questline was "written" at all. Basically nothing happened.
Ugh. We were all pretty disappointed in both: the story developments (or lack thereof) and the raid itself that seemed somewhat soulless.
"Here, smash a few random mobs to get your coín".

You go in expecting DRK quests and get WHM ones instead

[StrawberryZebra]

Considering that Ninjas are supposed to be STEALTHY... yeah I always found their particle effects and animations quite hilarious.

Based on their real life counter parts, I always assumed that Ninja were the type of guys who liked fighting smarter not harder. Sure, part of that is stealth but it also included fancy gadgets and psychological warfare in there too. I seem to remember Ninja also being early adopters of firearms too, so just plain shooting somebody wasn't out of the question either I guess.

They could implement the stealth part into the animations better to help convey it to the player. You could have, for example, an attack where your character vanishes from sight then reappears in a different position for a surprise attack. I admit it's not exactly original, but it gets the fantasy of the job across at least.

I don't think the reverse grip on the Daggers help matters though. It's hard to create a good looking animation where the weapons hit the target without it also looking like the character is just flailing their arms around. A functional animation would include the legs too, and that's nearly impossible to do without flipping the daggers 180 degrees to be the right way up.

Agreed, but anime ninjas are anything but stealthy, their more common theme is super agile, flashy and quick movements. SE clearly took considerable inspiration from Naruto and other anime like it.

Which is probably more identifiable material for the games main demographics. Personally, I think they should have gone with TMNT as their major inspiration and had a skill set that revolved around eating pizza, rescuing April and yelling "Cowabunga!" while riding skateboards.

i hate to say it but i think the Dwarf beast tribe questline is better written than the NieR one is.

From what little attention I paid, I think this meme best sums up the entire Puppets Bunker questline;

[Val the Moofia Boss]

i hate to say it but i think the Dwarf beast tribe questline is better written than the NieR one is.

This Nier stuff has been underwhelming. They kept hyping up "it's designed and written by Yoko Taro!" but aside from the bullethell corridor near the end of the second raid, the design of the raids is nothing to write home about, and the story is... well rather mediocre. It's really sad that I enjoyed the dwarf zaniness of the festival more than I enjoyed the actual plot of the robots and androids and stuff. And it's just really disappointing coming off of the Return to Ivalice storyline, which was great.

[dope_danny]

This Nier stuff has been underwhelming. They kept hyping up "it's designed and written by Yoko Taro!" but aside from the bullethell corridor near the end of the second raid, the design of the raids is nothing to write home about, and the story is... well rather mediocre. It's really sad that I enjoyed the dwarf zaniness of the festival more than I enjoyed the actual plot of the robots and androids and stuff. And it's just really disappointing coming off of the Return to Ivalice storyline, which was great.

The best way i've heard someone talk about it is that everything people have positives towards in side content feels connected to the world, even including the ivalice raid but nier doesn't. It feels like when lightning or noctis showed up as a tie in event. Meanwhile the dorf quests show the world progressing after we get the elevetor going and lakeland has to deal with losing its farmbelt in holminster switch. One is meant to be a silly daily quest hub and it progresses the world even in little ways and the other feels like a tie in event two years too late and not a good one either.

[Graeham]

I think the Nier stuff would be a lot less jarring if it took place somewhere on the Source. The entire time I kept wondering why nobody on the First had discovered the ruins and robots when they're so very close to Eulmore and its airships...

[dope_danny]

God the Yo Kai Watch stuff is a shitshow right now on my server. I got all the pets easy since thats just 12 fates for the new ones since i got everything the first time but its nothing but BLU with chocobos out spamming the frost aoe which means half the people can't see anything loaded in to tag it and the rest are doing so little damage they wont get the gold completion rank for the weapon token anyway.

and like 50 more tokens IF you did everything before, i remember how bad it was back in the day to get everything, i can't imagine starting from scratch now.

[Skizzit]

God the Yo Kai Watch stuff is a shitshow right now on my server. I got all the pets easy since thats just 12 fates for the new ones since i got everything the first time but its nothing but BLU with chocobos out spamming the frost aoe which means half the people can't see anything loaded in to tag it and the rest are doing so little damage they wont get the gold completion rank for the weapon token anyway.

and like 50 more tokens IF you did everything before, i remember how bad it was back in the day to get everything, i can't imagine starting from scratch now.

In all honesty, the weapons are all pretty goofy looking. I am think I am just going to snag the couple of pets I didn't get last time and the four new ones and call it a day.

[Poppincaps]

Spoiler: 

So maybe I'm dumb and everyone else has realized this, but I had an epiphany, I think that Azem purposely let themself get sundered so that they could protect all the shards and that each shard has a warrior of light that is a part of Azem. Which is also why Ardbert's soul resides within ours, because we're actually part of the same whole. Which is also why it's not expressly stated that we are Azem, because we're not. We're a fragment of Azem like all the other Warriors of Light are (the real ones not the ones that Elidibus "created"). Anyways tinfoil hat off.

[Wangming]

The best way i've heard someone talk about it is that everything people have positives towards in side content feels connected to the world, even including the ivalice raid but nier doesn't. It feels like when lightning or noctis showed up as a tie in event. Meanwhile the dorf quests show the world progressing after we get the elevetor going and lakeland has to deal with losing its farmbelt in holminster switch. One is meant to be a silly daily quest hub and it progresses the world even in little ways and the other feels like a tie in event two years too late and not a good one either.

Yeah that's the main problem with YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse. It's not really a part of the world. I mean I like NieR stuff and I'm fond of the Shadowbringers story, but YDA is just a self contained story that has nothing to do with anything else. RoI was integrated into the lore.

[dope_danny]

Well at least on the plus side for the new minions two are for fates in heavensward zones and two are for stormblood. I got two weapons in about 30 minutes of doing fate trains in the Ruby Sea and later i'll try the same in churning mists or dravanian hinterlands, the lack of BLU spamming makes it a lot easier and i think the people starting fresh are in for a far worse time than those of us that did it back in the day.

[KrayZ33]

This Nier stuff has been underwhelming. They kept hyping up "it's designed and written by Yoko Taro!" but aside from the bullethell corridor near the end of the second raid, the design of the raids is nothing to write home about, and the story is... well rather mediocre. It's really sad that I enjoyed the dwarf zaniness of the festival more than I enjoyed the actual plot of the robots and androids and stuff. And it's just really disappointing coming off of the Return to Ivalice storyline, which was great.

I'm gonna be honest, I skipped the story parts for Nier (in 5.3) because I just don't see it fit in FFXIV. I'm just not feeling the same amount of "mystery" all around it, because it's Nier... and Nier is a different game. Like... my head can't get around the fact that it's just there for fanservice, while the other alliance raid sets have been more properly served as an extension to the world and you could even see the Void Ark and you became even more curious etc.

And this one is more like "This is FFXIV" and "This is Nier"

The raid itself though? It's pretty awesome so far.
But I believe the earlier 2 sets were simply much better overall, especially the Stormblood one.

[Katchii]

God the Yo Kai Watch stuff is a shitshow right now on my server. I got all the pets easy since thats just 12 fates for the new ones since i got everything the first time but its nothing but BLU with chocobos out spamming the frost aoe which means half the people can't see anything loaded in to tag it and the rest are doing so little damage they wont get the gold completion rank for the weapon token anyway.

and like 50 more tokens IF you did everything before, i remember how bad it was back in the day to get everything, i can't imagine starting from scratch now.

The Yokai watch stuff never interested me, the weapons, pets and mounts all just looked too goofy and I know I'd never use them. Makes it easy for me to just ignore it, lol. Feel bad for those that feel the need to take part in that circus.

[Cattleya]

God the Yo Kai Watch stuff is a shitshow right now on my server. I got all the pets easy since thats just 12 fates for the new ones since i got everything the first time but its nothing but BLU with chocobos out spamming the frost aoe which means half the people can't see anything loaded in to tag it and the rest are doing so little damage they wont get the gold completion rank for the weapon token anyway.

and like 50 more tokens IF you did everything before, i remember how bad it was back in the day to get everything, i can't imagine starting from scratch now.

That's not nearly as bad as the BLUs who spam missiles and such on FATE bosses, resulting in the boss being 2-shot before 80% of the people there can even generate any relevant enmity for the rewards (or even get to the FATE in the first place, I've legitimately seen a couple finish within 15 seconds of popping up).

The easy solution is to not allow BLUs to join FATEs since they have no reason to do them outside of events like this anyway, but i'm guessing SE will ignore it.

[Very Tired]

Got up to level 50 and I'm seeing promise in the combat system. Would really love to get my summoner to max level but the msq is really bogging me down. Everyone is talking about how I need to do 100 more of these no-experence quests because I can even get to the level 51 quests. And the quests are just so boring to. Literally all of them revolve around either talking to some guy over in some location, wasting money to teleport somewhere and back, pausing everything to wait in a queue for 10-20 minutes to do some group content before you can continue, or killing a handful of mobs. Not even the grind to max level in classic wow was this boring. I know there's an item you can buy to skip all of this, but a company making their grind so awful you have to pay to get around it just sounds like a scummy business practice.

Also people keep treating me like a hero even though all my character does is silently stare at things and occasionally nod.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I know there's an item you can buy to skip all of this, but a company making their grind so awful you have to pay to get around it just sounds like a scummy business practice.

I would strongly encourage you to NOT skip through the story "to get to the good part". 2.0 through 2.55 sets up the characters, the world, the rules, the stakes, and so on. If you just skip to Heavensward, you won't care about what is going on, "who is this guy? And why should I give a shit about him?" or understand "why can't we just do X?" or why X is happening, and so on.

The story begins to pick up around 2.3. Don't rush, just soak it in. Yes there is annoying part now but it is so worth it in the long run.