[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[dope_danny]

I think people just should be in the mindset that if they don't do the content they don't get the rewards.

The monkeys paw is this lead to a large portion of many mmos lifespans being 'raid or die' rather than 'its about the journey, not the destination'.

[Super Kami Dende]

The monkeys paw is this lead to a large portion of many mmos lifespans being 'raid or die' rather than 'its about the journey, not the destination'.

There is plenty of rewardable content that isn't raiding though. You can be rewarded for a Journey.

[Projectmars]

You get a title and a special cane which i think is good enough. The scavenger hunt and figuring out the 'end it in seconds' puzzle for each stage is fun enough. Bad mmo design is making the 'fun' only exist for a reward like a gear upgrade. Thats holding player progression hostage. This is a totally optional timesink for the fun of it.

There's a Blue Story Quest locked behind Masked Carnivale… but tbh you only have to do the 25th one to unlock it and honestly? I don't see it as being much different from the fact that all other Level 50 Job Quests end in a fight.

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The problem is that with the vast majority of content that actually matters the mobs are immune to the broken spells and damage wise the class hits like a wet noodle compared to other jobs at level 50 and requires level 70's to carry them in content like the Primals.

Several Dungeon Bosses can be hit by the "Insta-Death" spells (Missiles, Tail Screw, Doom) while Adds that are spawned in boss/primal fights can be hit by them (hadn't thought to try it on Nails, but if Gray Arbiters are...) so there's that. I think once a decent enough rotation can be found and practiced enough then the class will probably do a lot better damage-wise (afaik: Bristle > Off-Guard > Peculiar Light > Song of Torment, then try to fit in as many alternating Mind Blast/Primal spells (since Primal abilities are off GCD and instant, while Mind Blast is the fastest casting spell that is boosted by Peculiar Light) into the Peculiar Light window as you can before settling into spamming one of your 130 potency spells works pretty well.)

[xuros]

How active is the group finder? The last time I played the game around the lvl30s using the "roulette"(?) it would take 40minutes and over to get into a group. Is it just longer and the lower levels to get into a random? Been thinking of coming back and giving it another go. I enjoyed the game but just hated playing alone in it lol.

[Katchii]

How active is the group finder? The last time I played the game around the lvl30s using the "roulette"(?) it would take 40minutes and over to get into a group. Is it just longer and the lower levels to get into a random? Been thinking of coming back and giving it another go. I enjoyed the game but just hated playing alone in it lol.

I've leveled two alts from 1-50 in the last year, and the only dungeons I noticed a much longer than average wait time were the two end scenarios for ARR, Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium. Everything else was normal, roughly 10-20 minutes for DPS classes, anywhere from 1-10 minutes for a healer (usually less than 5) and less than 5 minutes as a tank (usually less than 2). The wait times change depending on what time of day you're playing though.

How long ago did you play and on which server? They've made a lot of changes to the random grouping in duty finder over the last year or so, so you can get grouped with anyone on your data center which helps immensely with wait times.

[xuros]

I've leveled two alts from 1-50 in the last year, and the only dungeons I noticed a much longer than average wait time were the two end scenarios for ARR, Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium. Everything else was normal, roughly 10-20 minutes for DPS classes, anywhere from 1-10 minutes for a healer (usually less than 5) and less than 5 minutes as a tank (usually less than 2). The wait times change depending on what time of day you're playing though.

How long ago did you play and on which server? They've made a lot of changes to the random grouping in duty finder over the last year or so, so you can get grouped with anyone on your data center which helps immensely with wait times.

Around 2 years I think. Its been a while. My characters on Leviathan.

[Katchii]

So are Blue Mages not allowed to do the group finder with regular classes yet? I've been leveling my WHM and I haven't seen a single one. In the world though, goddamn trying to do my ~45-50 hunts is a pain in the ass with all the blue mages running around killing all the stuff I need.

Blue Mage is not allowed to use the Duty Finder to get into random dungeons, they have to join or create groups through the Party Finder and enter the dungeons/trials manually.

On that note, I finally got the last few primal spells I needed and am now 49/49 on Blue spells. I had a lot of fun with the dungeon and open world spells, fuck the primal spells. Their drop rate needs a serious increase or some kind of fail proof way of getting them. I spent a total of 7 hours trying to get Garuda's spell, with Shiva and Ramuh taking 3-5 hours each. Levi, Titan and Ifrit took less than an hour each. RNG is RNG, I get that, but that kind of drop rate when you need at least 4 other people to make it possible (and bearable) to get the spell on a job that's supposedly intended for solo play is ridiculous.

I haven't finished the Masked Carnival yet, working my way from 1-25 and just got to fight 24 last night and just wasn't in the mood to take my time with it and got frustrated when the mob in Act 3 didn't die to my fully buffed Final Sting...with only 1% HP left. It's not hard, just wasn't i the mood to deal with it normally after spending literally all day farming Shiva and Garuda.

Blue Mage is fun, but it would be so much more rewarding and interesting to play if it were allowed to go into dungeons with everyone else. The only mechanics that make it "broken" are the instant death spells, of which most bosses are immune, but they could easily fix that by making those moves unusable in dungeons if that's what it took. They already have story quests locked behind learning certain spells, why couldn't they lock duty finder access behind having certain spells? As it is, once I finish Masked Carnival fight 25 and complete the Blue Mage story line I'm not likely to pick up the class again until they release new spells because there's simply no reason for me to play it....maybe doing Carnival for the Allied Seals, but that will only last as long as it takes to get the mount speed increase for every zone, which won't take long.

Some of the most fun I've had is "carrying" a group of 3 Blues through Pharos Sirius so they could learn Flying Frenzy and Song of Torment and they ended up almost carrying me since I would gather up all the mobs and then they'd self destruct to kill everything. I just worked the bosses so they could learn the spells. Final Sting is pretty brokenly OP as well, with a fully buffed (Bristle, Peculiar Light, Off-Guard and Moonflute) able to crit for over 100k.

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Around 2 years I think. Its been a while. My characters on Leviathan.

Then to answer our question, your issues with duty finder queue times have been fixed. Wait times should be significantly lower than what you experienced before.

[Berethos08]

We need a screen shot of her next to a Roe or an elezaan to get an idea of Fran's height.

Minimum height Elezen at your service.

Spoiler: 

[dope_danny]

snip

It seems like the common concensus is that BLU is going to be the open world farming job once you exhaust the content. I imagine ARR hunting parties are going to be a nightmare but beyond that a lot of folks are expecting it to be ridiculous for fates. Can't wait to see King Behemoth vs a bunch of BLU's but aside from that stuff the boss fates that drop pets and cosmetic stuff for a gold star completion that are basically abandoned means people will be able to get their Baby Buns again without hoping someone else would show up.

[Katchii]

It seems like the common concensus is that BLU is going to be the open world farming job once you exhaust the content. I imagine ARR hunting parties are going to be a nightmare but beyond that a lot of folks are expecting it to be ridiculous for fates. Can't wait to see King Behemoth vs a bunch of BLU's but aside from that stuff the boss fates that drop pets and cosmetic stuff for a gold star completion that are basically abandoned means people will be able to get their Baby Buns again without hoping someone else would show up.

Which is fine , I guess. Still that's a super niche way to use a job they spent so much time developing. Don't get me wrong I really do like the job, but it's novelty drops off completely (for me, and many others who have already voiced their opinion) once you've done all the "Blue Mage" content. And after playing it and seeing how it's been implemented and how much damage they can really do, I really don't see a reason why they can't do duty finder. A few spells are brokenly OP, but otherwise their damage output is pretty sub par honestly. Disable the instant death skills in dungeons, lock them out of duty finder until they have some required spells (like they're already doing for the job quests) and they'd be fine and would still feel like Blue Mage, because many of the OP spells are useless on a lot of bosses anyway. They could just make trash mobs immune to them as well if they really wanted to make a trash pack challenging for some reason.

For me, it's a fun, amazing, different and quirky job that's never going to be touched outside of farming spells, doing the Masked Carnival once, and doing the job quests...meaning I'm never going to use Blue Mage outside of Blue Mage specific uses. Which I find a bit tragic considering how cool the job is and how easily I believe they could accommodate it in regular dungeon play. Lock it out of end game raids and truly end-game content (Savage raid, Extreme Primals) where balance is really important, but dungeons where we out gear them within a few days and roflstomp them from that point on I just don't see a reason to keep Blue Mage from being able to participate. Story Content as well, it's dumb they can't be used in story quests.

[leviathonlx]

The monkeys paw is this lead to a large portion of many mmos lifespans being 'raid or die' rather than 'its about the journey, not the destination'.

The game has plenty of destinations outside raiding and adding more rewards to BLU wouldn't hurt it. I mean I'd rather the content have something to make it worth the development time rather than something we'll see mostly abandoned by the playerbase in the next 2 weeks (good luck to BLU's who level really late getting Primal spells) and used for some niche things like 5 year old FATEs. Though from what was explained to me elsewhere Square already said they do plan on adding more rewards to it later but they didn't want to make people feel like they had to rush the class initially.

Several Dungeon Bosses can be hit by the "Insta-Death" spells (Missiles, Tail Screw, Doom) while Adds that are spawned in boss/primal fights can be hit by them (hadn't thought to try it on Nails, but if Gray Arbiters are...) so there's that. I think once a decent enough rotation can be found and practiced enough then the class will probably do a lot better damage-wise (afaik: Bristle > Off-Guard > Peculiar Light > Song of Torment, then try to fit in as many alternating Mind Blast/Primal spells (since Primal abilities are off GCD and instant, while Mind Blast is the fastest casting spell that is boosted by Peculiar Light) into the Peculiar Light window as you can before settling into spamming one of your 130 potency spells works pretty well.)

Yea I did find several bosses that could get hit but it typically was only things like the first boss of a dungeon or some adds that'd have been killed easily otherwise. I pretty much feel their spells should work on everything. It's 5 year old content so who gives a shit if the BLU can almost 2 shot a Primal especially if they want to make Primal spells take so long to get. Either way the supposive 'solo class' shouldn't require level 70's to carry it for things like the Primals.

[Granyala]

Ehhh. I like being rewarded for doing Content

And I'd like the content to be fun independent of associated rewards.

A good reward should be the icing on a cake (a.k.a. fun gameplay) and never be used to make me waste my time doing repetitive and menial busywork in order to boost playtime. *cough Eureka*

[RohanV]

Around 2 years I think. Its been a while. My characters on Leviathan.

I'm on Leviathan too, and I've never seen queues this bad for basic roulettes. Are your language settings for the Duty Finder unusual?

The usual cause of very long queues is that your language settings are very different than the server. For example, using English-only on a Japanese server.

[Super Kami Dende]

And I'd like the content to be fun independent of associated rewards.

They don't need to be mutual.

[Eleccybubb]

When will Square-Enix reveal details about the Shadowbringers expansion? I've seen the cinematic trailer and Blue Mage class is already in game but what about new content, new landmass if there will be one?

At Fanfest in February.

We got a fair bit of info at the NA one back in November.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Shadowbringers

Has all the features announced on so far. Some of EU/JP fanfest will either reiterate them or expand upon them on top of other new stuff.

Just bear in mind the "9 new dungeons" will more than likely be 6 levelling and 3 endgame ones. With the usual 1 per odd patch and 2 per even patch.

[Rivellana]

How active is the group finder? The last time I played the game around the lvl30s using the "roulette"(?) it would take 40minutes and over to get into a group. Is it just longer and the lower levels to get into a random? Been thinking of coming back and giving it another go. I enjoyed the game but just hated playing alone in it lol.

I'm new to the game so I've been going through the MSQ and needed to do a ton of dungeons to progress. I started as ranger/bard and most of the queues took 20-25 minutes, some less. Around level 40 I swapped to astrologian, and healer queues have generally either been instant pops (I press that button, it pops 2 seconds later) or take less than a minute. This has usually been around afternoon or evening US time.

[Katchii]

I'm new to the game so I've been going through the MSQ and needed to do a ton of dungeons to progress. I started as ranger/bard and most of the queues took 20-25 minutes, some less. Around level 40 I swapped to astrologian, and healer queues have generally either been instant pops (I press that button, it pops 2 seconds later) or take less than a minute. This has usually been around afternoon or evening US time.

This is why when asked point blank I always recommend people go through the story initially as a tank or healer if they can stomach that playstyle, simply because I know how jarring the experience can be when you get to a dungeon/trial story point and then have to wait for 20+ minutes to progress as a DPS, it takes away from the gravity of the in game situation and affects the story. Nothing like "Hurry we have to go save our friends from this threat!" followed by queuing and having to wait 20 minutes to do it to make the experience feel a little disjointed. It feels much better as a tank or healer who has near instant queues.

[Dugna]

This is why when asked point blank I always recommend people go through the story initially as a tank or healer if they can stomach that playstyle, simply because I know how jarring the experience can be when you get to a dungeon/trial story point and then have to wait for 20+ minutes to progress as a DPS, it takes away from the gravity of the in game situation and affects the story. Nothing like "Hurry we have to go save our friends from this threat!" followed by queuing and having to wait 20 minutes to do it to make the experience feel a little disjointed. It feels much better as a tank or healer who has near instant queues.

Final Steps of Faith was horrid my first time through even as a healer, the que took 50 mins, I mean I like the song that was playing but still.

[Katchii]

Final Steps of Faith was horrid my first time through even as a healer, the que took 50 mins, I mean I like the song that was playing but still.

Yeah, there are a couple of those. Castrum Meridianum, Praetorium, Final Steps of Faith and a while ago, regular Steps of Faith.

Final Steps of Faith isn't as bad as it used to be, but during HW it was awful. It was included in the regular leveling queue I think and people would purposely keep a lower ilevel set of gear on them when queuing so that they would be excluded from that fight because it was so bad. The fight is tough for people who don't know wtf they're doing.

I recently did it on a DRK I was leveling (maybe 2 months ago) and it still took ~20 minutes to get a group. We one shot it, but only because the healers were on point.

[Granyala]

Finally tried out the redmage today.
Interesting concept, wish they would highlight the state of instant cast better though.