[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Kittahsmash]

I never say it's unique to XIV. The story was good apart of the massive filter bits but I had major issues with server latency making group content one nightmare... my latency from Texas was as high as 1000ms at one point, were in WoW it's never top 100ms

1000 ms from Texas? That's incredibly odd, because I'm over in Idaho and I never get over 100 ms... what the hell server you playing on? Did you pick one of the data centers that's literally IN Japan? Because there are American servers that are literally located in a few places in the US so you don't get any sort of ping like that...

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Hey guys, I’ve recently started playing the game to check it out and I got a few questions.

I’m playing the free trial right now, if I buy the real game is there another starting point?

Only if you decide to make a new character, or don't upgrade your account correctly! I'm not sure what the process is, but SE's account system is so screwy and backwards that there have been a handful of people who bought the game twice by accident when they were trying to upgrade their account from a free trial...so just be careful and make sure you google around and see if you can find a guide or something just to be safe. The SE account system is hands down the game's biggest weakness...it's so confusing.

Do cutscenes and NPC’s have any voice acting? So far I’ve been experienced dead silence except for the “main” cutscenes

As you've experience, it's mainly the "major" cutscenes have voice acting. None of the side quests do, and the Hildibrand stuff has some pretty epic silly sound effects going on with the no voice acting thing. It can be a little jarring, going from no voice acting to suddenly fully voiced stuff (or vice-versa) but you get used to it eventually.

What would be a fun job/class for starting players ?

A lot of people pick Dragoon or Warrior, those two seem to be pretty fun for new people. The good news is that if you don't like how a class is going (and some of them can take a little while to really pick up steam, like Thaumaturge/Black Mage) then you can just select another one and level that up instead!

Welcome to Eorzea \o/

[Devilyaki]

Hey guys, I’ve recently started playing the game to check it out and I got a few questions.

I’m playing the free trial right now, if I buy the real game is there another starting point?

Do cutscenes and NPC’s have any voice acting? So far I’ve been experienced dead silence except for the “main” cutscenes

What would be a fun job/class for starting players ?

It’s not all voiced, so you’ll have to read a bunch :/
As for class, I have a machiniest and it’s rather fun and a Dark knight, but can’t be dark knight till you walk into the second expansion but it has a cool story… I bought the boost for machiniest

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Yeah HW is dope. Has a big cast of characters I like (including the dragons) and by the end of it you really feel like Ishgard is basically your city. Not to mention the city itself is probably the best city in the game (IMO).

As far as the roulette goes you're probably in a weird area where nobody is really doing that type of roulette anymore. The huge surge of players might have died off some because honestly it's a lot of time to invest into the game, especially when you start to realize there's about a third of another expansions worth of MSQ after you hit each expansions conclusion before moving onto the next. You also have a lot of different players who will stop and unlock everything at 50/60/70, and then players who beeline to 80 and work backwards from there. I was sort of a mix and just unlocked somethings along the way, but had no interest in trying to do extremes or savage difficulty along the way. Not that I could find a group for many of them, because I tried and pugs take forever to form for them.

Personally I find trials pretty fun (especially the ones you unlock that aren't part of the MSQ), but from a roulette perspective they really don't offer much. Leveling dungeons offer a decent amount from an XP perspective, but man they really aren't fun to do. I think FF14 does it's version of de-leveling and changing your stats far better than what WoW does, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it that much. A lot of classes in this game feel super bare bones below 50, and some of them feel really bad at 60 and below too. What's even more frustrating is playing classes that basically remove some obsolete abilities, and having to use them again if you decide to do old content. It's not a huge deal though because it's not like you have to be efficient doing old stuff (as it's generally really easy).

Still, I stay away from things like trial roulette because the XP just doesn't seem worth it for leveling alternate jobs, and the low level roulette because it's just not fun. Most of the roulettes I do are the raid (not the Alliance one, fuck that), the expert one, and the level 80 one. Mostly because those are the most fun, and I generally get to play the class as it is. Main scenario isn't bad if you're trying to farm poetics, but it's a coin flip on whether or not you get to spend 25 minutes or nearly 50 minutes in one.

The pre-expansion quest drag on so long, I have bought a skip each time now. You finally get to the end of the story and think it’s all good time to start the next but no still like 100 more quest to do, usually just run here talk to this sort of stuff too. Easy to just skip get the money that comes with and watch what you missed…

[Poppincaps]

For the record, voice acting occurs more frequently as the game goes on. There was quite a bit of voice acting in Shadowbringers.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

For the record, voice acting occurs more frequently as the game goes on. There was quite a bit of voice acting in Shadowbringers.

I'm used to reading a lot of non-voiced dialogue. Comes with the territory of RPGs being text heavy and almost always being made by mid-sized companies or below.

That being said, it's bizzare to me how FFXIV rakes in... how much money? Sell millions of box purchases, at least a million monthly subscribers (many of whom have extra retainers), and an extensive cash shop. Plus lots of merch like lore books and plushies and cookbooks and so on. I think they could afford to have every cutscene voice acted. Yeah, Japanese voice actors are legendarily more expensive than American dub voice actors, but WoW's voice acting was no joke either. WoW expansions have been completely voiced since Legion and was pulling in A-listers like Troy Baker.

[Poppincaps]

I'm used to reading a lot of non-voiced dialogue. Comes with the territory of RPGs being text heavy and almost always being made by mid-sized companies or below.

That being said, it's bizzare to me how FFXIV rakes in... how much money? Sell millions of box purchases, at least a million monthly subscribers (many of whom have extra retainers), and an extensive cash shop. Plus lots of merch like lore books and plushies and cookbooks and so on. I think they could afford to have every cutscene voice acted. Yeah, Japanese voice actors are legendarily more expensive than American dub voice actors, but WoW's voice acting was no joke either. WoW expansions have been completely voiced since Legion and was pulling in A-listers like Troy Baker.

WoW's expansions don't have nearly the amount of dialog and cutscenes that FFXIV does, so that's not even close to a fair comparison. Plus they don't voice act the quest text which is where most of the writing comes from. Regardless, I doubt it's a money issue. Yoshi P seems pretty strict in that he wants a consistent patch cycle and wants to avoid doing things that may interfere with that. They would have to add in a lot more VO work to get the percentage to 100% and that would definitely impact their dev cycle.

I'd love for the game to be fully voice acted, but the only MMO that seems to have most of its quests voice acted is SWTOR and ESO and they both put out far less content than FF14.

[Tojara]

I mean WoW has really neat in-game cinematics, but it's usually only several of them per expansion, with a couple for each of the 2-3 "big" patches they have. Most of the action that takes place in this game is pretty stand still and rarely does it have any sort of action. It's a meme but most of it's just awkward 90-180 degree turns and walking off screen to fade, which I laugh at when it happens. However, most of dialogue matters and it's a bit more of conveying emotion with facial expressions, which the game does quite well.

I pretty much skim through the dialogue when it's not voice acted, getting the idea of it and moving on. You can usually tell what you're getting into at the start of the dialogue phase, and I wouldn't blame people for skipping a bit of it.

To be honest the post-MSQ is usually quite good, although most of the .1 patches after the expansion launch have you basically settling the dust and aren't nearly as exciting by comparison. By the time you get to the .2, .3, and .4 patches which basically end the expansion it starts to get quite good.

The thing the bugs me the most about Blizzard story telling more than anything else is that there's way too many cliff hangers. Imagine if you had Illidan on the box of TBC and you killed Illidan at the end of the story, or the raid when you buy the game? I guess it's a different approach and to each their own, but I like that the main villain is typically identified and taken out at the end, or shortly after. Half of HW post-MSQ was finishing HW off, while the other half was devoted to setting up SB, and the list goes on really.

You don't really get properly lead into a new expansion in WoW like you do in FF14, which I think is a massive missed opportunity. Everything is so sudden, drastic and a massive change of pace from one expansion to the next and it makes it hard to really care about the story much.

[kaminaris]

Just to be sure.

From this event I can only get, 3 items from a vendor: mount, card and some "Lucian Locks"
Also 6 music rolls?

That's it? Nothing else?

[RampageBW1]

Just to be sure.

From this event I can only get, 3 items from a vendor: mount, card and some "Lucian Locks"
Also 6 music rolls?

That's it? Nothing else?

Well, the quests give you the glamour; but yes, that seems to be all.

[Thestrawman]

I'm used to reading a lot of non-voiced dialogue. Comes with the territory of RPGs being text heavy and almost always being made by mid-sized companies or below.

That being said, it's bizzare to me how FFXIV rakes in... how much money? Sell millions of box purchases, at least a million monthly subscribers (many of whom have extra retainers), and an extensive cash shop. Plus lots of merch like lore books and plushies and cookbooks and so on. I think they could afford to have every cutscene voice acted. Yeah, Japanese voice actors are legendarily more expensive than American dub voice actors, but WoW's voice acting was no joke either. WoW expansions have been completely voiced since Legion and was pulling in A-listers like Troy Baker.

Yeah... No matter how popular the game is it's not going to get the same sort of money SWTOR did to have everything voice. Not to mention it's voiced in more languages the SWTOR

[Xeenith]

getting the level 20 rank up missions will increase the max skill from 200 to 280 pts
I'm having one hell of a time getting the right squadron members to the best level to get the lvl 40 rank up missions (so I can finally rank up myself to full lieutnant at the grand company)

[FossilFree]

I have been playing with the Squadrons so far, and i manage to get into level 40 with them. But the issue I'm having, is that I cant get the min requirements for the special mission. I'm no longer able to train any of the 3 status, because i would end up lowering one or two of them. Leveling up increase those status?

It took me until level 45 to do the level 40 rank up mission. Also, use this:

http://ffxivsquadron.com/

It will show you what order to do trainings in to meet the requirements.

[Tenjen]

I want to get the artbooks and all the music albums but it would be such frivolous expenditure :<

[Delever]

I come to read this megathread every few days when I m bored at work and to this day I still see people come in to say they loathe having to do a small group activity to progress the story IN AN MMO.
Like you full knowingly downloaded and installed a game with the tag "Massive Multiplayer role playing game" and just went like "I m going to play this even though I dont like interacting with people".
That would be like me complaining I cannot group up with my friends to do side quests in the Witcher 3.

[ippollite]

I come to read this megathread every few days when I m bored at work and to this day I still see people come in to say they loathe having to do a small group activity to progress the story IN AN MMO.
Like you full knowingly downloaded and installed a game with the tag "Massive Multiplayer role playing game" and just went like "I m going to play this even though I dont like interacting with people".
That would be like me complaining I cannot group up with my friends to do side quests in the Witcher 3.

As exactly this type of player, feel free to AMA. Im happy to provide an explanation so we can get to the bottom of this. (: Ps: I made a thread for you: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...y-is-an-MMORPG

[Swnem]

Just to be sure.

From this event I can only get, 3 items from a vendor: mount, card and some "Lucian Locks"
Also 6 music rolls?

That's it? Nothing else?

What do you mean, nothing else? You get events giving you more somewhere?

Lucian locks is a new hair style btw.

A mount, a card, a new hair style, a new transmog set and 6 music rolls, 2 solo bosses, a side story with Noctis and a FATE.

I would say it's not too shabby. Not sure what your expectations are.

[Lane]

One of my favorite quotes from a Wildstar dev:

"And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were)."

[Delever]

One of my favorite quotes from a Wildstar dev:

"And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were)."

Dont mention wildstar
That game gave me so much hope... I still miss it and the potential it had.

[Wrecktangle]

Job action trailer tonight right?

[Tenjen]

People have all sorts of bingo cards to fill in regarding what could be revealed

[Hildibrand Manderville]

Job action trailer tonight right?

Yep. Super hyped. Hoping Red Mage Finally gets something more than just a second finisher.