[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[lawow74]

I like it too, I just hope one of the end results will be an unlimited amount of double-your-money-back donations, to make going there to vendor all your crap the best move and thus creating a better floor for MB value on things.

[Wrecktangle]

So I've been playing For Honor lately since it has like a free version.

I always loved the idea of the game, but the server issues and playerbase stuff really put me off. I'm glad they're still investing in it though. It's actually a lot of fun and surprisingly deep.

I keep thinking about logging on FF14, but I need this break I think

I smell a xenogears playthrough coming to tide me over to BFA/4.4.

[Graeham]

So, Patch 4.35 is scheduled for Tuesday, 3 July. I'm guessing the next Eureka will go live in early August.

[Granyala]

./golfclap

...

Yeah... I'm stoked...

[lawow74]

Ah well, at least we get Hildy and HoH to play with. Eureka's gonna be about as fun as a trip to the dentist, but I want my relic, so...

[Deleted]

Am I missing something or is Eureka literally just grinding mobs for hours on end? I went in, got to level 3, became supremely bored and never went back again. Grinding mobs was bad design in 2004, let alone 2018...

I guess no relic for me!

[Kazgrel]

It's kinda funny when arguably the biggest edition of 4.35 will be the revamped item search:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blog/002406.html

Hoping HoH is pretty fun. Got my moonlady doggo a day or so ago (92 runs, rip), so the only major things I'm working on currently are pentamelding gathering/crafting gear (bye bye gil and/or time) and capping tomes.

[lawow74]

Am I missing something or is Eureka literally just grinding mobs for hours on end? I went in, got to level 3, became supremely bored and never went back again. Grinding mobs was bad design in 2004, let alone 2018...

I guess no relic for me!

Pretty much. The problem isn't getting what you need for the relic, it's getting to the point where you can get what you need for the relic. The level grind is horrible and the NM train is the only way a sane fucking person can do it. So you end up largely AFK, getting one-shotted by most everything on the map (thus having to hide in the zergball when it moves or hope someone with a 2-seater mount carries you), spamming heals or res'ing during fights with the NM's cos you can't do shit for damage, and eventually, you reach a point where most of them will actually reward XP and it FINALLY comes to the end where you can get the drop that's required to finish your relic.

Once you're there, it's a nice easy way to cap Tomestones as all the NM's will reward them, so one good sweep and lockout can pretty well cap you for the week in about 3 hours.

[Graeham]

Well, Eureka seems to be more successful than Diadem at least. Even now, there's a lot of people running it whenever I jump into the zone to snag a few crystals. It definitely needs improvements to make it more engaging, though. I'm hoping each new Eureka map will introduce new things to flesh it out further.

Grinding isn't for everybody, naturally, though there's still a decent amount of people out there who do like sinking their teeth into even the most mindless of grinds where MMO's are concerned. Heaven on High is what I'm looking forward to the most between that and the next Eureka.

[Graeham]

It's more successful because of reasonable access to things people actually want. No one would be doing this for the sake of doing it, or for minor rewards or something.

Which seems super obvious, but it always makes me wonder why MMOs never seem to have content that's fun to do external of rewards. I guess it's just that they feel the need to keep everyone "occupied" with a carrot and players always feel the need to "keep up" or whatever.

That's just a consequence of many players wanting to be entertained constantly to justify spending hours each day online. The developers can only pump out so much content with each new patch, so a lot of it ends up involving a 'grind' to varying degrees in order to make it last.

It's why I think most people playing MMO's should be playing other games as well. For me, it's single player games. I'll never understand the people who only play WoW or FFXIV. Even at the height of my enjoyment for both I never solely played either. Doing so would have led me to miss out on many great single player titles.

[StrawberryZebra]

Grinding isn't for everybody, naturally, though there's still a decent amount of people out there who do like sinking their teeth into even the most mindless of grinds where MMO's are concerned.

I don't think it's the grinding that gets to people so much. Games like Diablo, Warframe and countless others have grinding as the primary mode of interaction in the game and those are successful enough.

The problem, at least where FF14 is concerned, is that it very often feels like a grind. Warframe serves up it's grind alongside some very satisfying game play, lots of potential playstyle options and delivers the whole thing wrapped in a power fantasy. You don't notice that you're grinding because you're too busy being a mass murdering Space Ninja for it to every cross your mind.

Making grind fun is all in the delivery, and Eureka really doesn't deliver.

[lawow74]

I honestly enjoyed POTD, even if it was a pretty serious grind, because it was role-less, which meant you weren't tied to other people to do it, and the queue times were short, plus the randomized layouts kept things more interesting. It also gave multiple useful rewards, like the weapons and was an amazing tool to level jobs with.

Eureka's problem is the mind-numbing grind to even get to the actual grind of getting what you want from it. Killing mobs and NM's isn't the problem. The problem is how it gimps your ability to do that from the start for the illusion of danger and challenge. In that respect, Diadem was far better as you went in, mounted up, did your mission, got your reward and that was it. If Eureka was more like that it'd be much more tolerable. IMO the NM FATEs should be in two parts. One is the spawn FATE, which gives you a visible progress bar towards making the actual NM pop. The second is the NM itself.

[Granyala]

Eureka's problem is the mind-numbing grind to even get to the actual grind of getting what you want from it.

If you want it for all classes, yes, but that is a grind of your own making.
If you only play one class actively, like me, all that was missing @ 20 was one pazu kill.

I do agree though, that the leveling is horribly done and very annoying. If I hadn't done the NM train with friends in TS (the talking and joking was the main entertainment), then I would not have bothered with Eureka at all. My free time is simply too scarce and valuable to waste it away at sth. as mundane as this.

- - - Updated - - -

The problem, at least where FF14 is concerned, is that it very often feels like a grind. Warframe serves up it's grind alongside some very satisfying game play, lots of potential playstyle options and delivers the whole thing wrapped in a power fantasy.

Do you want to know what the real problem is?
Final Fantasy XIVs gameplay SUCKS outside of raids. (So does WoW's Btw.) Simple as that. The combat in this game is neither fun nor entertaining when presented w/o boss abilities to navigate around. You mindlessly spam the same 5 buttons for hours w/o needing to pay attention to anything, because the mobs either do not have abilities or (if low level) you are instagib anyway. That's also a reason why I hate questing and leveling so much (barring main story quests, where the story is the entertainment).

[StrawberryZebra]

IFinal Fantasy XIVs gameplay SUCKS outside of raids.

Let's be honest, Final Fantasy has never had the greatest gameplay in the world. Menu based combat wasnt exciting even in 1987, it was functional, but not always engaging. The issue the series has always had has been offering different solutions to the same problem. There's always a "right" way and "wrong" ways to deal with any boss fight. Recently they keep trying strange action turn based hybrids that look extremely flashy, yet have very little gameplay involved. The combat is based more on style than substance. It makes for great looking trailers and really lets then push graphical power, but it feels very hollow and unsatisfying to actually play them.

It's a problem I have with JRPG's as a whole really. They're a medium to deliver story, not fully fleshed out complete experiences the way other genres are. FF14 is really no exception, we've floated hundreds of potential ideas on MMOC alone to try fix it.

It doesn't have to be that way though, I've always thought Squenix did their best work when they deviated from the traditional Final Fantasy formula. Like Chrono Trigger, it keeps a lot of the JRPG menu based mechanics in place, but offers enough fresh takes on the idea to be something special and memorable. Or Final Fantasy Tactics, which also kept a lot of the traditional Final Fantasy mechanics, yet something as simple as adding a gridded game board completely changed how it looks and feels to play.

[Granyala]

Let's be honest, Final Fantasy has never had the greatest gameplay in the world.

Are you talking about the single player games?
If so I agree, which is why I always used cheats (emulator FTW) to cut down on the tedium. Props for incorporating those directly into the PC-remakes.

I find games like Dragon Age or Divinity Original sin far more engaging b/c you have to plan strategically.

Still, I love Kitty-waifu and hanging around with friends, so there's that.

[StrawberryZebra]

Are you talking about the single player games?

Mostly their single player games, yes. Edge of your seat combat has never been something Final Fantasy has ever aimed to deliver.

Unfortunately, they seem to have taken that mindset into 14 too. The combat is servicable, certainly, but it's not anything special or enjoyable just for the sake of it. You don't go fight random enemies just for the thrill of it. You tolerate the combat when it's otherwise unavoidable for the most part.

I find games like Dragon Age or Divinity Original sin far more engaging b/c you have to plan strategically.

I really love Divinity Original Sin 2 - It nails what turn based combat should be for me. Easy to understand mechanics to execute a very complicated, and satisfying, plan. Really digging into the mechanics opens up some really interesting opportunities. Like kiting Melee across Ice so they slip, or Oil, so they're unable to catch you. Or teleporting enemies to lower elevations, or any one of countless possible options. There are a lot of very simple things that combine to make something far greater than the sum of their parts.

But because you have so many viable options to approach combat, you're constantly having to decide what the best move is on any given turn. There's a constant need to plan ahead and change up your tactics on the fly that keep it engaging.

Thats what I think Final Fantasy should be aiming for. Lots of very simple, but interlinked, mechanics. Sadly they seem to have chosen the same path as most other JRPG's, where they're going for flashy looking combat that has all the depth of a puddle. I don't remember my last time playing a main series Final Fantasy that I had to think to about what would be the best way to approach a fight, there's very clearly an "intended" way.

[StrawberryZebra]

It's not that there's not a "best way", the tuning is just such that it doesn't really matter.

I was thinking more of FF 10, particularly in the early parts of the game where it's made very obvious that you're ment to tag in each character to deal with their own specific enemy type. You can completely ignore it and do what you like, but it's intended that you'll match the right character to the right enemy. Most of the other entries are less explicit about it, but it's clear that you're intended to use Elemental weaknesses, certain jobs etc. The DS remake of FF 4 is absolutely brutal to deal with if you use anything but the intended stratergies.

A large part of that is tuning, as you say. The other half of the problem is encounter design - For example, what if there was a boss that was a glass cannon? There's a couple of ways you could reasonably go about beating it. You could just go all out offensive and hope to kill it before it kills you, or perhaps you want to bring more healing power and win by attrition. In an ideal world, both of those would be viable choices and it would be up to the player to decide which route they choose.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a boss like that in any main series Final Fantasy.

[Graeham]

FFXIV's combat is perfectly fine for what it is. One of the biggest appeals of any main Final Fantasy game is being able to wander and explore an immersive and engaging game world whilst witnessing character development and cool events along the way - so the bulk of content is fairly easy to access and enjoy. There's usually a lot of side content that is more challenging and FFXIV is no different in that regard.

The fact that gathering and crafting are their own unique jobs is also very interesting to me. Usually I don't bother touching either role in MMO's but I made an exception for FFXIV since it's yet another way to soak up the game's vast lore.

[zito]

So, Patch 4.35 is scheduled for Tuesday, 3 July. I'm guessing the next Eureka will go live in early August.

this delayed release has actually removed any desire to play the game for me. I've been waiting for content - patch releases and only gives 1/4 the content because we have "too many things to do" lol ok

[Eleccybubb]

this delayed release has actually removed any desire to play the game for me. I've been waiting for content - patch releases and only gives 1/4 the content because we have "too many things to do" lol ok

What delayed release?

That's how patches have worked since forever. Go look at 2.0 notes and the .5 patches in between.

4.35 usually contains mini stuff and Eureka within the later patch after.

It's always been their patch layout. Example being 3.X having the main stuff like story, raids and whatnot, 3.X5 having the minor content pieces like Palace of the Dead and so on.

3.35 contained Palace of the Dead just like 4.35 has Heaven on High.