[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Gibblewink]

For some reason the Titanic Sawfish took me the better part of two years. RNG just hated me there.

[Ladyoftheforest]

I hope you enjoy it just remember it is a story driven game not just a rave to endgame game

Merci. If the storypart is as good as the swtor experience then I will definately enjoy it. Taking my time with this.

[Sorrior]

Merci. If the storypart is as good as the swtor experience then I will definately enjoy it. Taking my time with this.

It DOES have a few sloughs and you will go through all expansion patches(each adds new story quests) but it is definitely worth it imo as they hint at stuff even in arr that we don't really see till sb or maybe next exoansion so enjoy and yep do what you want take your time

Ohh tip stick to the main story quests(meteor border) and blue ones on your main(they unlock stuff) the rest are fluff/can be used for alt xkasses)

[Dugna]

It DOES have a few sloughs and you will go through all expansion patches(each adds new story quests) but it is definitely worth it imo as they hint at stuff even in arr that we don't really see till sb or maybe next exoansion so enjoy and yep do what you want take your time

Ohh tip stick to the main story quests(meteor border) and blue ones on your main(they unlock stuff) the rest are fluff/can be used for alt xkasses)

just to add though, since the story takes time maybe weeks depending on your speed, I'd reccomend also doing your daily lvling roulette to make sure you don't hit the roadblocks of story further in ARR cause nobody wants to grind aurum vale.

if you're on one of those servers with the "road to 60" buffs, then don't worry bout even hitting those blocks.

[Sorrior]

just to add though, since the story takes time maybe weeks depending on your speed, I'd reccomend also doing your daily lvling roulette to make sure you don't hit the roadblocks of story further in ARR cause nobody wants to grind aurum vale.

if you're on one of those servers with the "road to 60" buffs, then don't worry bout even hitting those blocks.

Ohhh true my bad and very good tip also hunt logs

[Ladyoftheforest]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I have to confess that I never played a Final Fantasy title before. Would it be good to dive into some lore or can I enjoy the story as a standalone experience?

[Kaelwryn]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I have to confess that I never played a Final Fantasy title before. Would it be good to dive into some lore or can I enjoy the story as a standalone experience?

You don't really need to have played previous FF titles to get or enjoy 14. There are references that might have more of an impact if you have knowledge of them, but this is more or less a standalone. Pretty much everything that's from other games are put into the game in a way that is appropriate to the lore/world of 14, for the most part.

[Rogalicus]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I have to confess that I never played a Final Fantasy title before. Would it be good to dive into some lore or can I enjoy the story as a standalone experience?

It's okay as standalone, but there are many references to other games. Garlemald Empire and Magicite are akin to FF6 counterparts, general plot about balance between Light and Dark and Warriors of Darkness equal to Warriors of Light is from FF3, Crystal Tower raid recreates certain aspects of Crystal Tower plot from FF3, Ivalice raid and ascians are mostly from Ivalice games (namely FF Tactics and FF12), Omega raid just takes bosses from FF5, FF6 and FF1, Matoya is witch from FF1, some dungeons bosses are from other games as well.

[Xilurm]

So am i the only one really hoping the Gunblade job will be a melee DPS who shares gear with dragoon? Everyone keeps going on about how they MUST add a tank and healer this expansion but... why? There is no rule or law or whatever holding them to keeping such a balance, they could just as easily release a healer+dps or a tank+dps or dps+dps again.

And personally, i hope we get Gunblade DPS and Dancer Healer this time around.

The tanks are already hilariously unbalanced, adding a fourth to the mix is suicide when they cannot even get the current ones balanced. Healers however suffer far less from imbalance than tanks do, adding a fourth is nowhere near as suicidal. It also means they can stagger the DPS queues from here on by releasing all DPS alongside a tank or healer so the queues are not devoid of tanks or healers.

Why is that they MUST add a dps job? And you're talking about balance but no one really wants to pick SAM or BLM for their static either. And besides I don't even like melee dps so give me GUN tank anyday.

[Sorrior]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I have to confess that I never played a Final Fantasy title before. Would it be good to dive into some lore or can I enjoy the story as a standalone experience?

This game has referemces but nah no direct ties.

I do suspect eorzea is a FF nexus world though

Oh btw most ff are like that. Each ones in it's own world bar sequels which have there worlds title in it(this is the simple answer ffvii and ffx are the same UNIVERSE but different planets hundreds of thousands of years apart)

But overall they are independent

[Daevelian]

Why is that they MUST add a dps job? And you're talking about balance but no one really wants to pick SAM or BLM for their static either. And besides I don't even like melee dps so give me GUN tank anyday.

I'm not even sure you understood what i was saying, or you're trying to put words in my mouth.

Try again?

[dope_danny]

Why is that they MUST add a dps job? And you're talking about balance but no one really wants to pick SAM or BLM for their static either. And besides I don't even like melee dps so give me GUN tank anyday.

the majority of mmo players are dps so they always get preference. Its why every mmo adds tanks and healers once in a blue moon but always includes dps in new class updates. Sadly -and this is from a guy that mostly dps's- the amount of people who prefer to tank for example is much lower and so its the same amount of work for much less of your paying subscribers and shit sucks but thats how classes get designed and why games can go like 15 years and only add 1 new tank class every half a decade or more.

[threads]

idk why people would want a new tank when DRK is a mess and PLD is so boring compared to WAR.

[endersblade]

idk why people would want a new tank when DRK is a mess and PLD is so boring compared to WAR.

What is the current balance of classes? I'm sorry, I've been away from the game for quite some time. So from what you've said there are 3 tanks at least. Are there more? How many DPS and healers? There needs to be a balance. If there are way too many DPS classes, it'll make it even harder for them to find a spot in dungeons and such. And does FFXIV follow the holy trinity, or does it have support roles? I seem to recall that Bards in FFXI were more support than anything.

- - - Updated - - -

the majority of mmo players are dps so they always get preference. Its why every mmo adds tanks and healers once in a blue moon but always includes dps in new class updates. Sadly -and this is from a guy that mostly dps's- the amount of people who prefer to tank for example is much lower and so its the same amount of work for much less of your paying subscribers and shit sucks but thats how classes get designed and why games can go like 15 years and only add 1 new tank class every half a decade or more.

It stems from difficulty. In FFXI, tanking was an absolute BITCH. You so much as sneeze in the wrong direction and it's a wipe. And with experience loss from death, nobody wanted to play with a noob tank. Then you have games like WoW, which after about BC or so, you could basically just AFK tank, people would just complain if you weren't pulling fast enough. In FFXIV, in all the random dungeons I ran, I always had a top level tank and most of them were at least good at what they did. There was only one or two situations where people actively complained about the tank.

So it makes me wonder, exactly how bad IS tanking in FFXIV that nobody wants to play it? I have always played tank classes in MMOs, I enjoy the playstyle for the most part. You say DRK is messed up, but I felt DRK was the easiest to tank with...it felt like the WoW pally, your AoE enmity made tanking groups really easy. Granted, while I did level every class to 60 or w/e the cap was in the pre-RDM and SAM expansion, I don't really recall what other tank classes were like because I rarely ran dungeons with them.

[Dugna]

What is the current balance of classes? I'm sorry, I've been away from the game for quite some time. So from what you've said there are 3 tanks at least. Are there more? How many DPS and healers? There needs to be a balance. If there are way too many DPS classes, it'll make it even harder for them to find a spot in dungeons and such. And does FFXIV follow the holy trinity, or does it have support roles? I seem to recall that Bards in FFXI were more support than anything.

- - - Updated - - -



It stems from difficulty. In FFXI, tanking was an absolute BITCH. You so much as sneeze in the wrong direction and it's a wipe. And with experience loss from death, nobody wanted to play with a noob tank. Then you have games like WoW, which after about BC or so, you could basically just AFK tank, people would just complain if you weren't pulling fast enough. In FFXIV, in all the random dungeons I ran, I always had a top level tank and most of them were at least good at what they did. There was only one or two situations where people actively complained about the tank.

So it makes me wonder, exactly how bad IS tanking in FFXIV that nobody wants to play it? I have always played tank classes in MMOs, I enjoy the playstyle for the most part. You say DRK is messed up, but I felt DRK was the easiest to tank with...it felt like the WoW pally, your AoE enmity made tanking groups really easy. Granted, while I did level every class to 60 or w/e the cap was in the pre-RDM and SAM expansion, I don't really recall what other tank classes were like because I rarely ran dungeons with them.

tanking 4 mans is easy and relaxing mostly, least for me, I can't stand doing 8 mans as a tank though. The threat swap in this game is very irritating

also they can add more tanks/healers and still learn to balance the others a bit more, but honestly their balance is pretty ok in the first place since litterally every job can clear all content. its just minimal min/max bs that stops some people from doing those jobs sometimes. I just want more jobs to play that vary up the playstyle some and sure as heck don't want a reverse RDM that would be even more lazy then making another tank that is similar to WAR for example.

[Graeham]

As long as we get Gunblade, I don't particularly care whether it is a DPS or a Tank. I do want it to have fairly bulky looking armour, though.

[threads]

pyros maiming set is so nice

[Wrecktangle]

Seconded. (Not really a surprise, I know )
And before @threadz asks me too: yes I prefer the old relic because it was essentially a by product of what I did anyway. (I never forcefully grinded it, except for the light or fate phase which was about as much fun as Eureka)

To be frank though: I am perfectly fine w/o a relic at all. Having a raid group now, I am mostly sporting the primal weapons.

I just hate that they typically have much higher quality models than raid weapons. For instance, Excalibur is gorgeous, whatever the HW relic is called is beautiful, etc. I wasn't impressed with the Pagos models, but the Galatyn is one of the best PLD models IMO. The last raid weapon I remember looking any good was Gordias, though the Omega one isn't terrible.

If there are way too many DPS classes, it'll make it even harder for them to find a spot in dungeons and such. And does FFXIV follow the holy trinity, or does it have support roles? I seem to recall that Bards in FFXI were more support than anything.

I'd imagine that like Tanks/Healers, new DPS jobs don't create many more DPS players, it merely shifts the distribution of the DPS jobs. When a new job is released it's always a little oversatured in DF/PF content while people try it out, but the impact on queues normalize fairly quickly.

Game uses a strict Holy Trinity.

So it makes me wonder, exactly how bad IS tanking in FFXIV that nobody wants to play it? I have always played tank classes in MMOs, I enjoy the playstyle for the most part. You say DRK is messed up, but I felt DRK was the easiest to tank with...it felt like the WoW pally, your AoE enmity made tanking groups really easy.

The problem with tanking in this game is that it's just mind-numbingly boring. Tank mechanics are rarely challenging and you have an abundance of cooldowns; then they're generally loaded with some of the most dry kits (low amount of oGCDs that aren't defensive CDs). Encounters are also super predictable in a pass/fail nature which means mistakes have a disproportionate amount of consequences.

Speaking personally - I wish tanks had more oGCDs and DPS level rotational engagement.

[Sorrior]

Their encounter design often mirrors their job design. Almost like they're repeating the same loose script over and over and don't want to break from it much.

(Possibly of note: I haven't played nearly as much of the raid content in XIV as I have in WoW, but I have played pretty much all the dungeons and a "ok" chunk of the raids.)

What's funny is that when I first started playing XIV I told all my WoW friends about how much more engaging and mechanically demanding the XIV dungeons were compared to WoW. Qarn specifically I remember gushing about. Failing mechanics actually killed you! Bees could kill you! The final boss had multiple mechanics! It wasn't exactly Heroic Ragnaros but it was more than most WoW dungeons offered at the time.

But then over time it just started feeling kinda repetitive, especially with Primal fights and boss fights that mostly hinged on "hit the boss until they do something, then stand in this spot or wipe" or "kill the adds in x time or wipe". (Or, "red zone fatigue" which is something I always said Wildstar had a problem with, too.)

Maybe it's my own MMO cynicism coloring the experience, but I just don't feel like they try very hard to innovate. Much like with job design: they often get the "feel" of the encounters down well. The visual design is on point, the music is usually awesome, but the mechanics just aren't as interesting.

Wellll they stopped really putting instant death in and removed it from quarn.

Dungeobs stopped getting as much love as raiding got sadly..whiich is always an issue for me as i tend to prefer dungeons to raids overall.

Don't get me wrong still fun but defeating tbat boss in quarn the first time actually felt like i did something(pre nerf) and even amdapor had some fights that were challenging.

They have just gone to easier designs for dungeons and pushed all the challenge to raids..there are reasons i prefer the 2.0 to 2.1 style of the game as opposed to what it started becoming/has become(more raid focused if you want to even keep up in df in dungeons..when a tank can solo a boss in a CURRENT dungeon in part because his ilv is so high you know there is an issue)

[Vyndeleron]

*sees recent hotfix note* "-In Eureka, the server would crash under certain conditions."

Probably when someone mentions they're having fun in there in shout