[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[neik]

Haha.. it's just a quicky pose after I found out that I could load and pose enemy mobs in Amnamnesis a well.
It is a lot of fun but it also takes hours to make a complete pose that looks realistic and good from all angles.

It is cool that you can place NPCs you like anywhere you want, even in your own house.


Sure isn't easy to be small!


I'm sure something could be arranged *chuckles*. Then we just add tormented screams, the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones.

I do wonder how serious people would take wiping if their favorite character visually got torn to shreds.
I wouldn't touch dungeons with a 10 foot pole if my dear Ifalna had to suffer that much. :S

It's really great picture, you can conceptualize it to your own liking. Very artistic, so very well done and time well spent in my opinion.

My notion of coloring my world. First view is the one I'm currently using, second view is actual original picture. Open image in new tab for full exposure.







It really doesn't do the justice how good it can get. I mean morphing weather is just that, it doesn't really do anything but that. You can truly create a perfect world for yourself. Pure fucking dopamine jolt when you can recreate scenes from your life that gave you nothing but happiness in the past.

[Granyala]

Thank you for the kind words.

What you did looks fairly similar to what I have my Re-Shade set to, though I don't think I pushed the colors quite that far.
The colors of the flowers in the very first picture look a bit too saturated, considering that it is night time.

Still depends on your panel calibration though, it's virtually impossible to see exactly what you see unless we both calibrate our monitors to the same target.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It's a LOT of work to create such a mod, even if you can re-use assets and ideas from other IP. So I kinda understand paying a small fee for it.
Generally though, I'm not fond of clothing mods. The knowledge that others do not see my character as I do is immersion breaking for me.

There's a new dalamud addon called Penumbra that allows you to apply mods to only your own character, so if you have a dress mod you'll only see your character in that specifically modded dress while everyone else appears in the normal dress. There's even an extension for Penumbra called Mare where you can add people to your share list and it will show the mods on your character to the other person, while you see theirs. It's gaining traction really fast.

[Granyala]

There's a new dalamud addon called Penumbra that allows you to apply mods to only your own character, so if you have a dress mod you'll only see your character in that specifically modded dress while everyone else appears in the normal dress. There's even an extension for Penumbra called Mare where you can add people to your share list and it will show the mods on your character to the other person, while you see theirs. It's gaining traction really fast.

That's ... a really cool idea!
Though non-mod users still do not see my character as I do. Not that it would matter too much outside of RP environments.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It seems that FF's explosive growth can be almost certainly confirmed from three factors: Shadowbringers marketing, COVID, Asmongold, and Endwalker.

It also seems as if population numbers are even higher than people originally speculated.

In addition, it seems that a high number of players continue to return to the game when they've quit previously.

Most important point: FFXIV population continues to grow, and continues to grow steadily. Even with post expansion dips, we're at a higher average player count than ever in the game's history.



Also, people aren't as upset with Endwalker as many would have you believe. The retention rate of Endwalker has been phenomenal, with only a mild drop in players, unlike most MMOs that experience a nose dive.

Additional point: None of these official numbers count China, which has about 500k additional players on CN servers of FFXIV.

[Granyala]

WoW basically killing itself could also be a factor. So far, I've heard nothing good about the current expansion from people that still played.

[Ghost of Cow]

WoW basically killing itself could also be a factor. So far, I've heard nothing good about the current expansion from people that still played.

Eh, it's really not all that bad now that they toned down some of the BS. WoW is far too fond of their early-expansion timesinks. It's almost like they shoot themselves in the foot trying to milk the early expansion rush a bit too much and then make the expansion steadily more tolerable over time.

Of course, the thing about sub numbers is that neither company really puts official stuff out there. A youtube video with the typical clickbait slide ("BIG", "We found the TRUTH") is hardly a source.

[Pannonian]

Eh, it's really not all that bad now that they toned down some of the BS. WoW is far too fond of their early-expansion timesinks. It's almost like they shoot themselves in the foot trying to milk the early expansion rush a bit too much and then make the expansion steadily more tolerable over time.

Of course, the thing about sub numbers is that neither company really puts official stuff out there. A youtube video with the typical clickbait slide ("BIG", "We found the TRUTH") is hardly a source.

They're using the same data by the same guy with the same methodology doing this since 2017. I mean attack the video if you want, but the video isn't the source for the numbers.

Did you even watch or just attack random points that could have been answered if you watched 2 minutes of it?

[MsSideEye]

They're using the same data by the same guy with the same methodology doing this since 2017. I mean attack the video if you want, but the video isn't the source for the numbers.

Did you even watch or just attack random points that could have been answered if you watched 2 minutes of it?

Not to mention the fact that if you're wanting to do anything in gaming these days youtube wise, it HAS to be clickbaity if you're wanting the numbers and are trying to be competitive about it.

And saying the whole 'WoW is too fond of early-expansion timesinks'... all I gotta say is where has Cow been the last ten years of WoW's lifetime? They've ALWAYS had stupidly massive timesinks throughout the entire expansion. It's only in the last few years they've been getting heat for it because they've been going overbroad to the point of it being abusive.

[KrayZ33]

The timesinks you are talking about are basically only an issue for the top tier playerbase in WoW.

In regard to what casual players have to do to get what they want, FFXIV is actually way more time intensive.
So.. what the hell are you guys talking about.
Did anyone actually "farm" anima and thought it's important to do? Or AP in Legion?

[Ghost of Cow]

And saying the whole 'WoW is too fond of early-expansion timesinks'... all I gotta say is where has Cow been the last ten years of WoW's lifetime? They've ALWAYS had stupidly massive timesinks throughout the entire expansion. It's only in the last few years they've been getting heat for it because they've been going overbroad to the point of it being abusive.

....I don't see how saying "WoW does this" somehow suggests that they haven't been doing it?

That's a really weird reading.

- - - Updated - - -

Did anyone actually "farm" anima and thought it's important to do? Or AP in Legion?

People who want to be upset about something usually take the worst case scenario of a situation and claim it's the norm.

(See: Previous conversations about how tons of split runs and having add-on developers in your guild is normal for raiding in WoW.)

[Katchii]

The timesinks you are talking about are basically only an issue for the top tier playerbase in WoW.

In regard to what casual players have to do to get what they want, FFXIV is actually way more time intensive.
So.. what the hell are you guys talking about.
Did anyone actually "farm" anima and thought it's important to do? Or AP in Legion?

Timesinks vs timegates I guess. In comparison, FFXIV has very few (most current high level tomestone, 24-man raids and most current raid) that are time gated, as far as gear acquisition, the actual content tied to those can be run as often as you want, just no gear. Everything else can be experience and consumed whenever you get to it. There were actual parts of the story in WoW that were time gated, you literally could not progress past a certain point (early Covenant Renown caps which gated the Covenant and overall post launch story line) no matter how much you played because the game would not let you.

[KrayZ33]

Beast tribes, Doman enclave, custom deliveries, nier weekly come to mind.
Not much different. Some of it is old content and still gated.

It's not like FFXIV can call itself free from it.

I mean, I'm not a fan for timegating... but that was not the issue.
Saying that WoW is somehow shooing away players due to oppresive timesinks is just wrong. There is hardly anything you have to do, to do what you want to do. It's all optional, almost no matter what you want to do.
No matter if it's 1 month into the expansion or 1 year into it - the only aspect of the game where I'd consider doing anything at all would be mythic raid endgame... but that's kinda the point about this type of content anyway. If you play mythic, you usually want to invest the time and effort... or at least can be expected to do more than just log in with your character from "last season".

[Pannonian]

Beast tribes, Doman enclave, custom deliveries, nier weekly come to mind.
Not much different. Some of it is old content and still gated.

It's not like FFXIV can call itself free from it.

I mean, I'm not a fan for timegating... but that was not the issue.
Saying that WoW is somehow shooing away players due to oppresive timesinks is just wrong. There is hardly anything you have to do, to do what you want to do. It's all optional, almost no matter what you want to do.
No matter if it's 1 month into the expansion or 1 year into it - the only aspect of the game where I'd consider doing anything at all would be mythic raid endgame... but that's kinda the point about this type of content anyway. If you play mythic, you usually want to invest the time and effort... or at least can be expected to do more than just log in with your character from "last season".

if we cannot discern between locking content behind arbitrary time durations and having loot being limited to lockouts then somehow this debate doesnt make a lot of sense.

[KrayZ33]

if we cannot discern between locking content behind arbitrary time durations and having loot being limited to lockouts then somehow this debate doesnt make a lot of sense.

Nothing I mentioned is related to loot?

Beast tribes have stories attached to them that you have to grind out repeating the same quests over and over, the nier weekly is a post raid story line that is gated, the doman enclave isn't about loot, the custom deliveries aren't either. Nothing I mentioned is related to weekly loot lockouts that you have like in raids or whatever.

I mean, the word mentioned wasn't even "timegates" - it was timesinks. So yeah, talking about stuff locked behind arbitray time durations would indeed not make sense to discuss when we talk about timesinks, which require you to play-a-lot, not wait-a-lot.

The AP grind to get ahead in Legion was a timesink. A timesink hardly anyone actually did because it didn't add anything worth of note for non-top 1% players. If they did it, they were either wasting their time or they did it to compete in mythic raiding/races.
Either way, it's not like it was locking you out of anything if you didn't do it, so why would it push a noticeable amount of people to leave the game? It just doesn't make sense... it's more likely just a scapegoat for people who wanted to stop playing a long time ago.

I can't say the amount of stuff you have to do to get something in FFXIV is any better.
Almost everything that doesn't involve combat loot requires a gigantic time investment that is by no means any more reasonable than any other MMO out there, it fits right in... and is, in specific cases, actually far and beyond above.

[Pannonian]

Nothing I mentioned is related to loot?

Beast tribes have stories attached to them that you have to grind out repeating the same quests over and over, the nier weekly is a post raid story line that is gated, the doman enclave isn't about loot, the custom deliveries aren't either. Nothing I mentioned is related to weekly loot lockouts that you have like in raids or whatever.

Honestly i cannot remember the Nier story being gated on weekly, may be bad memory on my part

For custom deliveries and beast tribes though: Their dailys give xp (a ton!) and rewards for items, and yeah, while there is a little bit story, doing them limitless would mean they'd be nerfed, and their rewards, because the tables are designed that way.

Custom Deliveries: Best way to get high scrip. Again, remove the weekly lockout and you have to severely nerf the rewards.

And while i cannot say no one does them for story, i know no one at least... so your examples seem kinda forced to me.

[Ghost of Cow]

For custom deliveries and beast tribes though: Their dailys give xp (a ton!) and rewards for items, and yeah, while there is a little bit story, doing them limitless would mean they'd be nerfed, and their rewards, because the tables are designed that way.

Custom Deliveries: Best way to get high scrip. Again, remove the weekly lockout and you have to severely nerf the rewards.

Well yeah, but "if you remove the lockout you'd have to nerf the rewards" goes for anything with a lockout. It's not unique to anything in XIV or something that makes the lockouts any more appealing.

[KrayZ33]

Honestly i cannot remember the Nier story being gated on weekly, may be bad memory on my part

For custom deliveries and beast tribes though: Their dailys give xp (a ton!) and rewards for items, and yeah, while there is a little bit story, doing them limitless would mean they'd be nerfed, and their rewards, because the tables are designed that way.

Custom Deliveries: Best way to get high scrip. Again, remove the weekly lockout and you have to severely nerf the rewards.

And while i cannot say no one does them for story, i know no one at least... so your examples seem kinda forced to me.

I mean... it's been a while since I did beast tribes, but there is a gate behind a gate with the "you can do 9 each day" on top of "each beast tribe only has 3 quests".
And they are seperated by level anyway. If they don't want to farm beast tribes for XP, make the ones you unlock with lvl 50 or whatever not grant XP for lvl 60+ players, but remove the cap, so people can actually do these quests when they want to.
I mean, the easiest way would be to make the first 9 grant XP and then the others not - done.

But that is just the same with the AP/Azerite/Anima grind.... the AP grind in legion for example was "semi"-gated behind %-modifiers, if they wouldn't have, players could have grinded the s-out of it.

And what exactly do you mean you know no one doing them for the story?
Do you just mean the deliveries? Or the beast tribes also?
Because we know for sure that a LOT of people do beast tribes for the story and not for some random mount or something.
Why?
Because people are looking forward to beast tribes, to very SPECIFIC beast tribes, not just "anything-whatever that gives me a mount"
The forums are always full of that kind of "hype".

If you mean deliveries, sure maybe... but I don't know anyone who farmed XY exalted in WoW for the story either. Yet complains about the timegating comes up all the time
The thing is, both games have time gated story content.
You could also say WoW at least allows you to shoot through the content once the inital gate has been opened.
FFXIV still has stuff that gates you on a weekly basis even if it's old content.
I'm pretty sure you still have to wait weekly to get the Nier post raid storyquests done.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...s_Is_Not_Gloom
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...chant_of_Komra

In WoW, I did all of something-something mortis in a single day and then another for all the "non MSQ" quests.
There is this mini-game with some kind of robot or whatever, but it really doesn't matter.
It's basically a custom delivery or a beast tribe thing - or this post Nier story thing. Relatively irrelevant.


Again, I'm not a fan of timegating, but the points made were actually about timeSINKS, stuff you GRIND out. WoW has very little grind. Doesn't matter if it's crafting, reputation or whatever. If you want something-something-Mortis reputation, you do the weekly and maybe the 3 daily quests each day (which are needed for the weekly also).
That takes like 10m a day (and that's still too much for me btw, which is why I'm not doing it). Everything else, like rare killing and chest farming (the timeSINKS) or whatever, is a huge waste of time for those that WANT to do it, but they don't really get anything worth mentioning out of it.
In FFXIV on the other hand? That's basically how you GET something, not how you CAN DO something.

edit: Oh and while I'm not certain how it will end up being the case.
I haven't done a single Hilde quest yet. I will probably have to do all the stuff related to it from several expansions just so I can do my Relic stuff this time around. Big oof.

[Granyala]

I mean... it's been a while since I did beast tribes, but there is a gate behind a gate with the "you can do 9 each day" on top of "each beast tribe only has 3 quests".

Beast tribes are just WoW's Daily Quest reputation factions.
Deliveries are limited, think of them as weekly limited badges (if you played back in the day) for crafters.
Technically there is no hard limit but they limit the easy way to gain scrip.

Loot lockouts are the same. Story is basically gated by patches in FF, WoW couples that with reputation thresholds, to spread it out a little further/give the illusion that all involved parties need to work for a while to make stuff happen. If I remember correctly.

Never had any problems with these in either game.

Only time gating that really annoyed me in WoW was this whole "wait a year for some magical patch so your dragon suddenly remembers how to fly after you gained the last reputation in some insignificant faction implemented just for this reason".

I mean I get not wanting players to fly from day one, no problem with having it gated behind some busywork (after all, 5K gold in TBC took A LOT of time).
But Blizzards hard-on for anti flying never made any sense whatsoever to me, who played on a PvE server.

As for the AP in Legion: I was already a raid retiree back then, so never felt any need to grind it. It was pretty self evident when you reached the point at which the DEVs no longer intended meaningful progress. It was only the tryhards that thought they need to grind till kingdom come.

[MsSideEye]

....I don't see how saying "WoW does this" somehow suggests that they haven't been doing it?

What I mean that when it comes to World of Warcrafts use of grindy timesinks is that they've been there and been abusive since the beginning and only really been 'early expansion' set ups because Blizzard has added more upon more time sinks thanks to them doing so much Borrowed Power. The rest of their systems never changed, they just knew that they've burned so many bridges that they're trying to catch up patching things up. It'll help them a lot, but if they continue the path of 'Let's put power behind everything instead of making it optional', it's just going to continue burning their playerbase out.

The timesinks you are talking about are basically only an issue for the top tier playerbase in WoW.

In regard to what casual players have to do to get what they want, FFXIV is actually way more time intensive.
So.. what the hell are you guys talking about.
Did anyone actually "farm" anima and thought it's important to do? Or AP in Legion?

There's a big difference between what's being talked about here, though.

In the case of Wow, it's an instance of 'If you don't do this, well, hope you like being useless for the rest of the expansion'. Grinding was tied DIRECTLY to power (Artifact Power, Azerite, Covenants and hell, even older Reputations had gear you needed to get into Heroics with) and without it, you were basically SOL.

Compare to 14, where while yes they've got this mega special weapon for each expansion that's touted as the 'Strongest Weapon' for that expansion, it essence it's little more than a special weapon players can unlock, since the end game power of the Relic weapons is maybe 5 item levels above the rest and is almost never an upgrade for the cutting edge players.

So you've got something you're FORCED to do to get anywhere VS something that's optional and (In the case of the relic weapons) designed for you to do over the course of an entire expansion. That's a big difference. The same reasoning could also be given to things like Beast Tribes/Doman Enclave/Custom Deliveries. NONE of these are required for power or to be able to actually participate in the latest and greatest content in 14.

Beast tribes are just WoW's Daily Quest reputation factions.
Deliveries are limited, think of them as weekly limited badges (if you played back in the day) for crafters.
Technically there is no hard limit but they limit the easy way to gain scrip.

Loot lockouts are the same. Story is basically gated by patches in FF, WoW couples that with reputation thresholds, to spread it out a little further/give the illusion that all involved parties need to work for a while to make stuff happen. If I remember correctly.

Never had any problems with these in either game.

Beast Tribes are by far superior. Not only are they're not required for power or progress (Most of WoWs back in the day were, not sure if this is still the case with Shadowlands), but they actually give you a sense of change. It's wonderful to see the Ananta slowly build up their base of operations or the Pixies fix up their broken dream garden as I progress through their stories and help them with their troubles. The only time I ever got that ever in WoW was with the Klaxxi, which i still hold to this day as one of if not the BEST reputation in Warcraft.

Loot Lockouts are only the same when the content is new. Once the newer content (Or hell, even just a story patch) comes about, you can do them to death without worries. I can go into Pandæmonium Savage as many times as I want right now and farm it till death for the gear I'm wanting. Wow still makes me wait a week to go back and kick Arthus in the face again for Any loot when no one, and I DO mean no one, is going to be running that content again regardless.