[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[PenguinChan]

It doesn't help that some achievements have been removed without warning, either. So someone could be working on them slowly over time only to log on after a patch and find their progress made irrelevant.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure what the point of adding achievement certificates was when so few items are added to exchange them for...

Just to have the system in place anytime they want to add things, probably. Which is basically nothing right now.

[Kaelwryn]

It doesn't help that some achievements have been removed without warning, either. So someone could be working on them slowly over time only to log on after a patch and find their progress made irrelevant.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure what the point of adding achievement certificates was when so few items are added to exchange them for...

None of the restoration achievements (barring the top 12/100 ones) have been removed. You can still work on p2 achievements, not to mention those 500k ones *are* intended to be long term.

[Granyala]

None of the restoration achievements (barring the top 12/100 ones) have been removed. You can still work on p2 achievements, not to mention those 500k ones *are* intended to be long term.

Aye, I don't think they'll ever remove them. Most likely they will nerf point generation when the last phase of Ishgard is no longer current content.
That way, they can keep the entire system operational and provide people with something to do.

Or they might remove everything when the reconstruction is complete, though given the nature of the mount giving (do 500K on all classes) achievement, I somewhat doubt it. The majority of players attempting that achievement won't make it during ShB.

[Merie]

Taking the alt i made after 5.3 to Heavensward doing the post Preatorium/credits ARR stuff and man Crystal Towers questline hits so differently now. Hearing a song we hear a remix of as Shadowbringers 5.0 ended with Graha Tia going to sleep saying "i look forward to you waking me in a bright future my friends" is a hell of a gut punch knowing whats in store for him till we meet again

What I found most interesting of note was how in the Preatorium, Ha ha bread mentions that "the growing imbalance afflicting the planet must be redressed. If it is permitted to worsen, the very laws of existence-both aetheric and physical-will be warped beyond all recognition."
I think he was talking about The Sound.

[dope_danny]

I've finally gotten around to playing DMC5 and boy V's playstyle really makes me want Yoshi and the team to give a ranged tank a try. a Puppet Master that sends out different kinds of mammets while hanging back and dropping buffs and setting traps would be rad and i imagine the only reason it doesn't is the transition from single player environment to multiplayer with randoms is why in general its an idea we don't see often when tanks keeping a boss static and facing away from the party is kind of the basic role objective.

[Thestrawman]

I've finally gotten around to playing DMC5 and boy V's playstyle really makes me want Yoshi and the team to give a ranged tank a try. a Puppet Master that sends out different kinds of mammets while hanging back and dropping buffs and setting traps would be rad and i imagine the only reason it doesn't is the transition from single player environment to multiplayer with randoms is why in general its an idea we don't see often when tanks keeping a boss static and facing away from the party is kind of the basic role objective.

While the idea does sound good I've played enough summoner to know that the pet AI is not good enough for this to work effectively.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

While the idea does sound good I've played enough summoner to know that the pet AI is not good enough for this to work effectively.

Better AI would be needed yes. Could borrow some AI from Thancred in the Trust dungeons and have the pet automatically dodge incoming AoEs. Or, you could the WoW route and give pets a 90% damage mitigation to AoEs. Either way, if you do that, then half of the challenge of tanking is gone, and instead the player just needs to worry about occasionally repositioning the pet tank for the rest of the party's benefit, and pressing the damage mitigation for tank busters and healing up the pet.

Breakdown of the problem with pet tanking regarding movement and the alternative options

Spoiler: 

That ties into the big problem with pet tanking: movement. 50% of tanking a boss is surviving. The other 50% is positioning the boss correctly so that the rest of the party isn't dying to AoEs (and to prevent the boss from AoEing the party). This requires fine control over whoever is tanking the boss. The problem with pet classes is that you do not have fine control over the movement of your pet. You're still piloting your main character. So how are you supposed to have fine control over the pet too? What, do you press a button and switch back and forth between piloting the main character and piloting the pet? What if you need to move both at once? Or do you set aside the arrow keys/a thumbstick on the controller for pet movement, so the player is trying control both at once, controlling player movement with WASD/left thumbstick and pet movement with arrow keys/right thumbstick. That'd mean the player wouldn't have a hand free to use on their mouse to move the camera and click stuff.

I think directly piloting the movement of the pet would be impractical. The best bet would be to do the WoW thing where you can click on the terrain and your pet will go there, like an RTS. But how are controller users supposed to do that? Controllers don't have instant, fine point control like mouse & keyboard does. A controller's strength is in smooth thumbstick movement. Any game that requires instant, fine point control like an RTS or a FPS generally feels sucky to play on the controller. FPS games get around this with sticky aim (where you don't have to aim on point, just close enough), and console RTS like Pikmin get around this... by making the cursor a character that the player pilots, leading the other units to where the player wants to go. So we're back to square one.

So you have three choices:

• 1. Player input is not required for the pet tank to constantly handle AoEs. Pet tank either has AI to handle it on its own, or it shrugs off the AoEs. Thus, the amount of time the player must spend manually repositioning the pet tank is reduced. The player's gameplay must be shifted to something else, like trying to heal the pet or dealing damage.

• 2. Player can manually pilot the pet tank, making it extremely difficult for the player to try to move both his character and the pet tank out of the way of AoEs and to do other things like deal damage. Probably the worst option.

• 3. Player has simplified control over the tank, using the mouse to right click on the terrain and the pet will go straight there. Impractical to apply to controller users, and thus does not work for FFXIV.

I think option 1. (pet tank either handles AoEs on its own or shrugs them off) would be the best way to go. Sacrifice the tank positional gameplay and try to replace it with something else or amp up the focus on another aspect of tank gameplay.

Personally, I'd try to do something like Pikmin. The player has an assortment of different pets they can throw at the boss. This works for controller users because they can easily lob pets towards where they want. The pets are somewhat expendable and the player is going to swap them out/throw another pet at the boss in a few a seconds. So maybe the player has like 2 charges of blue tank pet and regenerates 1 charge every 10 seconds, who will automatically dodge AoEs or has 90% AoE damage mitgation. The real problem are the tankbusters, which will kill the blue tank pet. If the player loses two blue tank pets in a row and before their next charge of blue tank pet comes off cooldown, that's the tank player's failure state and the boss starts ravaging the party. In order to keep the blue tank pet from dying to a tank buster, the player needs to throw out, say, a green pet that will sacrifice itself and soak the tank buster. And the usage of that green pet is limited. Maybe it's on a long cooldown - it won't come off of cooldown before the next tank buster - but the cooldown is reduced by dealing damage, so thus the player has the incentive to maximize their damage by throwing out burst damage red pets and DoT damage yellow pets to reduce the cooldown on the green pet.

That just leaves the issue of tank swaps. IIRC, tanks tend to swap around 2 minutes or so. So balance the whole gameplay so that after about 2 minutes, the player is probably out of blue tank pets, so the other tank needs to take over while the player builds up charges again.

[Katchii]

While the idea does sound good I've played enough summoner to know that the pet AI is not good enough for this to work effectively.

Pet AI, true, Trust AI is fine and would work well in this situation but having a pet tank automatically moving away from mechanics would be REALLY broken IMO.

[StrawberryZebra]

I've finally gotten around to playing DMC5 and boy V's playstyle really makes me want Yoshi and the team to give a ranged tank a try. a Puppet Master that sends out different kinds of mammets while hanging back and dropping buffs and setting traps would be rad and i imagine the only reason it doesn't is the transition from single player environment to multiplayer with randoms is why in general its an idea we don't see often when tanks keeping a boss static and facing away from the party is kind of the basic role objective.

While a ranged tank sounds good on paper, the reality is that the vast majority of bosses are melee and will simply move into melee range of a tank anyway. The only time it kind of works is when you've got a ranged boss and a ranged tank - And then it's just a positioning nightmare for everyone involved.

Even with a pet, the player would still need to be high on the threat table just incase the pet dies or is otherwise unable to act for long periods.

On the other hand, I do think V's playstyle is closer to what the current Summoner should be. Your buttons make your pets do cool things, with Super Pets as a payoff for managing them well. I mean just literally copy the whole thing, delayed attacks at all . The current Summoner is a complete mess and needs a re-do at somepoint in the future. It's got no clear design direction and that design debt is hamstringing it going forwards.

[Graeham]

I have a feeling that if Square Enix make another MMO then it'll ditch the slower combat in favour of something faster paced and heavier on the flashy action. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to that. The lack of a proper pet based class in FFXIV is a major disappointment to me. As is the lack of a bow based job that isn't flamboyant.

[Katchii]

I have a feeling that if Square Enix make another MMO then it'll ditch the slower combat in favour of something faster paced and heavier on the flashy action. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to that. The lack of a proper pet based class in FFXIV is a major disappointment to me. As is the lack of a bow based job that isn't flamboyant.

Summoner was a better pet based class at ARR launch, IMO. What's it's degenerated to now is an abomination. The only reason I can fathom people still play it is because when it's played well it's DPS is amazing. It's game play is garbage though.

[Graeham]

Summoner was a better pet based class at ARR launch, IMO. What's it's degenerated to now is an abomination. The only reason I can fathom people still play it is because when it's played well it's DPS is amazing. It's game play is garbage though.

I just stick with RDM for my caster fix. BLM and SMN feel very clunky to me, especially when synced. The damage potential of both is a major perk, though as soon as I got both to level 80 I haven't touched them since.

[Katchii]

I just stick with RDM for my caster fix. BLM and SMN feel very clunky to me, especially when synced. The damage potential of both is a major perk, though as soon as I got both to level 80 I haven't touched them since.

I've just never jived with BLM, WAY too much of a turret caster for my liking, especially given how movement heavy most fights are. And as you stated, syncing with it is horrible because depending on which level range you get your game play and rotation completely change. SMN went completely down the shitter with Shadowbringers, as far as game play is concerned IMO.

You're right about RDM though, I've enjoyed it since it launched and I mained it in Stormblood but Dancer is more my thing now. Strangely, the utility of RDM is why I don't play it as much anymore, because in PuGs (especially bad ones) you end up being expected/required to pick up the healing slack, especially for rezzes and I just want to focus on MY performance, not everyone else's. It can be exciting when you get that clutch heal or rez off and save the day, but that typically requires a level of awareness of everyone else in your group that I simply don't want to be responsible for most of the time.

[Graeham]

I've just never jived with BLM, WAY too much of a turret caster for my liking, especially given how movement heavy most fights are. And as you stated, syncing with it is horrible because depending on which level range you get your game play and rotation completely change. SMN went completely down the shitter with Shadowbringers, as far as game play is concerned IMO.

You're right about RDM though, I've enjoyed it since it launched and I mained it in Stormblood but Dancer is more my thing now. Strangely, the utility of RDM is why I don't play it as much anymore, because in PuGs (especially bad ones) you end up being expected/required to pick up the healing slack, especially for rezzes and I just want to focus on MY performance, not everyone else's. It can be exciting when you get that clutch heal or rez off and save the day, but that typically requires a level of awareness of everyone else in your group that I simply don't want to be responsible for most of the time.

DNC doesn't exactly fit the 'feel' of the character I play in-game, but I have to admit it feels very smooth and satisfying to play. I generally like ranged classes that can attack on the move. I loathe the 'turret caster' and 'glass cannon' tropes, though. I suppose RDM is a nice compromise since the double cast system allows for more flexible repositioning.

I'm with you on the utility, though. It's a double edged sword - I used to go as RDM to learn a fight but realised I was falling into the trap of focusing too much on cleaning up the mess of the other players who were also learning the fight.

So I just go as MCH instead...

[Granyala]

Strangely, the utility of RDM is why I don't play it as much anymore, because in PuGs (especially bad ones) you end up being expected/required to pick up the healing slack, especially for rezzes and I just want to focus on MY performance, not everyone else's.

That's because you have unlimited INSTANT rezzes. It does not cost you a 10s cast like it does a healer.
When I dontr have my instant up, I do expect any RDM to rez too.

As for clutch heals: never seen nor done that in practice.

[Rogalicus]

That's because you have unlimited INSTANT rezzes. It does not cost you a 10s cast like it does a healer.

Are they really unlimited? With Verraise's steep cost it's pretty easy to run out of mana (unless I was doing something wrong).

[Granyala]

Are they really unlimited? With Verraise's steep cost it's pretty easy to run out of mana (unless I was doing something wrong).

Well considering that people don't die THAT often and that there are more players that can rez: yes.

If a person dies the 3rd time during a boss fight, it's better to just let them lie there, so they can watch and learn.

[Katchii]

That's because you have unlimited INSTANT rezzes. It does not cost you a 10s cast like it does a healer.
When I dontr have my instant up, I do expect any RDM to rez too.

As for clutch heals: never seen nor done that in practice.

Oh, I totally get it, RDM is amazing at it. Hence the expectation. It's completely understandable. They aren't truly unlimited though, but as you said, it's more than enough to take care of your average PuG.

As for healing, it's only ever a thing in groups where the healer is truly terrible and/or doesn't know the fight. ie in fights where there's a big AoE that the healer doesn't know about and doesn't prep for so doesn't top up the tank or other party member and would otherwise die from it. But, RDM heals are pretty dang potent, coupled with instant raises, they can spot heal the tank enough to keep them alive while they rez the healer and get the healer back up AND give them some mana to save what would have been a wipe. And after all that, popping Lucid Dreaming gives enough mana back to get back into the fight again.

But as I said, as amazing as they are at it, that's typically more responsibility and effort than I typically want to put in anymore.

[Granyala]

But as I said, as amazing as they are at it, that's typically more responsibility and effort than I typically want to put in anymore.

Understandable. I never heal as RDM, with the exception of myself. I expect the healer to do his job.
Though, most of the time I rather am the healer... you know.. if you want sth done right....

[Katchii]

Understandable. I never heal as RDM, with the exception of myself. I expect the healer to do his job.
Though, most of the time I rather am the healer... you know.. if you want sth done right....

Agreed, but I only ever do the 24-man raid and roulettes for leveling my sub 80 jobs anymore. My RDM and healers are all already level 80 and fuck being the healer, or anyone who is expected to be a healer or rezzer, in the current 24-man raids (any 24-man when it's current, not just these Nier ones). I queued as a DPS, not a babysitter...