[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Katchii]

Archer/Bard is actually pretty ok about it. So that's good.

Anyway, I dunno why people still pretend that "leveling up" is supposed to be some sort of "tutorial". That stuff has never been true. The leveling process is part time sink, part RPG-Purist appeasement.

I somewhat agree, but part of leveling up and learning new skills is learning how to USE those new skills. Being thrown everything at once can be confusing if you have a lot of skills. Current WoW wouldn't really have that problem, but FFXIV absolutely would. So leveling up while learning the new skills allows you the time to put those new skills to use before you hit end game helps you understand their use and priority, etc... easing you up the learning curve.

Tutorial may not be the absolute correct term, but for all intents and purposes, IMO it fits.

[Baconeggcheese]

"It's been 30/40/50 levels and I still use the exact same skills/abilities/rotation" type of thing is exactly what I'd expect, despite getting bigger stats and gear with bigger stats.

That's exactly my issue though, I'm 57 right now and it still feels like my rotation is almost exactly the same. I'm still waiting for whatever abilities are supposedly supposed to make this feel whole / good.

As of right now it feels like I've been doing 57 levels of almost the exact same thing with just bloat added for the sake of bloat in order to make up for the long GCD. The abilities themselves don't really do anything to change up the rotation, its just bloat.

The complete lack of procs really doesn't help with this either, as the rotation is incredibly scripted.

It's also a factor of the rework expansions bring.

This is probably the hardest thing to deal with, because with every xpac rework they'd need to rework when you get what a bit to make a job feel good. WoW has had this problem big time.

But I can't think its not insanely important to do that. If your players are breathing a sight of relief when they cap out because they felt like they had to suffer through leveling then the game has a massive issue. WoW still hasn't learned that lesson even with all the reworking they've done and this game doesn't seem to have either.

There's not really a surefire win. Are there any good examples of progression based games where you have every single skill/ability/power up from early on, though?

See there's the thing, I'm not even saying you need to have everything. I'm saying you need to have whatever fills out the kit enough to make it feel good, and then you can add mechanics / depth later.

Its also just bad design that you have no idea if you're even going to like the class at cap because it plays so differently while leveling. Imagine spending weeks / months getting your char all the way to the end just to find out you freaking hate how it plays now. I imagine most people would sooner drop the game than take that gamble a second time.

And I think this becomes more and more pronounced as you add xpacs and move that goalpost further and further.

Maybe at the very least more off GCD should be introduced earlier. Get your main rotation, some off GCD, then your secondary rotation, some final off GCD, and then at cap you're getting more of your "you're going to need these for hard hitting raid type stuff" abilities or a final notably powerful attack sort of thing.

I think the issue (at least with monk) with that is that the off gcd abilities have incredibly long CD's and don't really add anything to the rotation. They're pretty much entirely there for the sake of giving you an extra button to press inbetween other abilities so that the gameplay isn't so slow. It seems so counter productive to me that they just have all this bloat that really doesn't need to exist seemingly for the sake of it.

its kind of like the issue the wow devs were saying where they kept adding abilities every xpac because they felt they had to, and FF14 just hasn't learned that lesson yet.

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I somewhat agree, but part of leveling up and learning new skills is learning how to USE those new skills. Being thrown everything at once can be confusing if you have a lot of skills. Current WoW wouldn't really have that problem, but FFXIV absolutely would. So leveling up while learning the new skills allows you the time to put those new skills to use before you hit end game helps you understand their use and priority, etc... easing you up the learning curve.

Tutorial may not be the absolute correct term, but for all intents and purposes, IMO it fits.

The issue is the game just gives you skills but never provides the context for which you're supposed to use them, and so you never learn. Simply giving you something spaced out does not a tutorial make.

Which is why it really isn't a tutorial, its more just not trying to overwhelm someone before they even get started.

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Any of you guys watch netflix while playing?

I noticed my game stutters even when I'm getting 120+ fps whenever I have netflix open on my other screen. Doesn't even have to be playing anything, simply having the website up causes this. Which is odd, because I can watch basically anything else and this doesn't happen. Dunno if there's something I can look into to fix it.

[Granyala]

No clue about savage PuGs but in general, every class is accepted. You just have to know what you do and push the numbers.
I think support matters more than caster vs melee.

Yes, no official DPS meter exists but pretty much every raid uses FFlogs and ACT, so your performance WILL be assessed.

[Veluren]

The Derpy Boy is here!

[StrawberryZebra]

The issue is the game just gives you skills but never provides the context for which you're supposed to use them, and so you never learn. Simply giving you something spaced out does not a tutorial make.

Which is why it really isn't a tutorial, its more just not trying to overwhelm someone before they even get started.

In some cases it does, in some it doesn't. Leveling a melee will usually slowly build up one combo, then introduce the second/third ones later on. Given how combos are structured, and how the hotbar itself guides you through them, it's a very simple way to guide the player through their rotations and to make sure they know when and how to use them. Reading the tooltips of skills like Storm's Eye should clue you into what the combo doesn't.

Casters on the other hand tend to have their actual mechanics loaded towards the end of the leveling curve. It's very counter intuitive and acts less like a tutorial and more like a hurdle. Whilst Bards get something that resembles their max level gameplay very early on, Machinists are waiting all the way until 70 before their Job actually makes cohesive sense.

Squenix have certainly thought of their leveling as being a tutorial. Halls of the Novice is a clear example, as are including dungeon content in the MSQ. It allows them to slowly build up the expectations on their playerbase over time by offering absolute bare bones basics tutorials, then reinforcing them through actual play experience. That process seems to just stop dead at level 50 though. Some of the early class quests are indicators too, there was a Gladiator one that required you to effectively tank mobs off an NPC companion and Scholar ones that required you to use Esuna, Shields etc on allied NPCs to complete the quest.

If they were sucessful in establishing a tutorial or not is up for debate, but there's lots of evidence scattered around that it was their original intent.

[Wrecktangle]

Catch 22 is if you have all your abilities by level 10, people grow bored of having no progression to their character, to which the argument then tends to get thrown around that there should be no leveling whatsoever and that's just a huge can of insanity worms to untangle logistics of.

For sure. Thankfully there's a middle ground ripe for the taking.

There's not really a surefire win. Are there any good examples of progression based games where you have every single skill/ability/power up from early on, though? I can't think of one in the RPG genre. Even most action games have you unlock new skills later in the game. Hard to say what the right balance is from the ground up.

Don't use the word every. No one is advocating that. We're asking for a better ability accrual curve and associated gameplay.

Blade and Soul generally filled out your core by level 20 (out of 50 on release). You had access to a plethora of CC, DPS abilities, and utility. You still got plenty of stuff post 22 and options and layers to expand your gameplay to meet new challenges.

Wildstar did a great job with this actually. If anything it's the thing it did better than its entire competition.

My old PLD rework restructured the entire ability accrual pacing and methodology if you can recall. The idea was early on you got your core concept. Blocks -> Swipes -> allowing oGCD combo finishers. This is why Shelton and Shield swipe are early skill accruals.

That's my PLDs core functionality and you had it at by level 10. You expand that by adding other oGCDs, more GCD combos to add functionality (AOE threat, mitigation, etc) and utility as you accrue levels. Later on you got healing utility and more defensive utility and more CC (obviously in my redesign these things were important in encounter design, unlike today).

FF14 skill accrual as it stands make little sense and is actually detrimental in almost every possible fashion:

• It makes sycning feel fucking awful
• It makes the early game fucking awful
• It makes players have no clue how to play their job at max level when they arrive there
• It creates jarring experiences while between expansions

The only benefit I can see is that getting abilities every couple levels does feel good, but I do firmly believe that it doesn't outweight the cons, and that there are better ways (i.e. like I mentioned above) to accomplish the same feeling with minimal downsides.

Maybe at the very least more off GCD should be introduced earlier. Get your main rotation, some off GCD, then your secondary rotation, some final off GCD, and then at cap you're getting more of your "you're going to need these for hard hitting raid type stuff" abilities or a final notably powerful attack sort of thing.

Honestly either the oGCD system or the combo system needs to be changed if FF14 wants to grow evolve eventually. oGCDs are so binary they're not really fun. They should be cool abilities that influence decision processes and be used to help speed up gameplay IMO. If your oGCD does nothing but flat damage or generic damage buff, it should be reworked.

Combos are cool in theory, but their implementation is so dry that it makes things feel more static than they should be. I'm less decided on how I'd want combos to be, than I am about oGCDs.

I just started a new character and I think it's fine as it is currently. My Archer had a decent rotation by lvl 12 with a buff, dot, proc, finisher, off-gcd filler.

If they threw too much at you early on, then you end up like current WoW where you literally learn nothing for like the last 30 levels. That just makes leveling feel unrewarding and boring.

To be fair, Archer is probably the only decent example, and it's also the job most closely parallel to WoW's model. Honestly, BRD is probably the best designed job in the game if we're being honest.

[Faroth]

That's exactly my issue though, I'm 57 right now and it still feels like my rotation is almost exactly the same. I'm still waiting for whatever abilities are supposedly supposed to make this feel whole / good.

As of right now it feels like I've been doing 57 levels of almost the exact same thing with just bloat added for the sake of bloat in order to make up for the long GCD. The abilities themselves don't really do anything to change up the rotation, its just bloat.

The complete lack of procs really doesn't help with this either, as the rotation is incredibly scripted.

This may not be the MMO for you, then. I didn't realize you were looking for a completely different combat system. At max level, you're still going to have a rotation, not button spam waiting for something to proc so you can push that instead. XIV has often been compared to Classic/BC era WoW, and that applies to classes having rotations as their combat design. WoW has moved extremely far away from that (to the point that my hunter feels like it has 2, sometimes 3, abilities to hit ad nauseum until I get a proc).

This is probably the hardest thing to deal with, because with every xpac rework they'd need to rework when you get what a bit to make a job feel good. WoW has had this problem big time.

But I can't think its not insanely important to do that. If your players are breathing a sight of relief when they cap out because they felt like they had to suffer through leveling then the game has a massive issue. WoW still hasn't learned that lesson even with all the reworking they've done and this game doesn't seem to have either.

Yyyyyeah, leveling is never going to be removed. No MMO will survive on nothing but endless raids and dungeons with nothing between them. Especially with XIV being a main entry Final Fantasy that's story driven, it definitely won't be in this one. I don't think the majority of players are "breathing a sigh of relief" and "suffering through leveling" in this game. I'm starting to feel more like this is essentially a game designed in opposite to what you're looking for.

Its also just bad design that you have no idea if you're even going to like the class at cap because it plays so differently while leveling. Imagine spending weeks / months getting your char all the way to the end just to find out you freaking hate how it plays now. I imagine most people would sooner drop the game than take that gamble a second time.

It's not that drastic a difference. It's not like you change the entirety of your gameplay at max level. Especially not from 57 to 70. By level 30, you have a feel for how it works. You're just going to have more complexity of additional abilities.

FFXIV was designed during ARR with the mindset of bringing in players from Final Fantasy who hadn't played MMOs more than designed to try and steal WoW's player base. That's probably a large factor in the slow introduction to abilities and is specifically why they started with a slower GCD.

I think the issue (at least with monk) with that is that the off gcd abilities have incredibly long CD's and don't really add anything to the rotation. They're pretty much entirely there for the sake of giving you an extra button to press inbetween other abilities so that the gameplay isn't so slow. It seems so counter productive to me that they just have all this bloat that really doesn't need to exist seemingly for the sake of it.

Part of monk's design is the dance more than the off GCD. You have a positional damage buff with their abilities that will have you dancing rear > side > rear or side > side > rear as you're doing their abilities. I haven't played them in HW and SB, but I didn't think that was removed from them. I mained monk in ARR and always found the dance to make a pretty smooth rhythm that I enjoyed weaving the abilities into.

its kind of like the issue the wow devs were saying where they kept adding abilities every xpac because they felt they had to, and FF14 just hasn't learned that lesson yet.

At level 60 you have the same number of abilities at 50 and at 70 you have the same number as at 60. They trimmed out abilities and merged them with others to make way for the new ones.

Any of you guys watch netflix while playing?

I noticed my game stutters even when I'm getting 120+ fps whenever I have netflix open on my other screen. Doesn't even have to be playing anything, simply having the website up causes this. Which is odd, because I can watch basically anything else and this doesn't happen. Dunno if there's something I can look into to fix it.

Never had an issue. The only time the game seems to stutter is if I click out of it to the other window, but not while something is playing or just open. No idea what would be causing it. And to make it more puzzling, I use Chrome for Netflix which is a resource hog itself, so that doesn't really help offer a solution to dig into either. :/

[Katchii]

The issue is the game just gives you skills but never provides the context for which you're supposed to use them, and so you never learn. Simply giving you something spaced out does not a tutorial make.

Which is why it really isn't a tutorial, its more just not trying to overwhelm someone before they even get started.

That's fair, with no guidance on what to do with the skills it really can't be a tutorial. I'm just not sure what the proper term is.

[Faroth]

That's fair, with no guidance on what to do with the skills it really can't be a tutorial. I'm just not sure what the proper term is.

Well, you get the abilities a few at a time and they have tool tips that indicate its use, so I wouldn't say it's completely unclear. I've never gone outside of the game to have to learn what the abilities are for, just the tooltip for a little more info. But I'm an MMO veteran, so thinking as a "what am this MMO genre" perspective....

To incorporate a tutorial aspect, they could give you the new ability during the quest's usual combat scenario and have you use it so you know its purpose, then upon successfully completing the quest, you get the ability added to your skill set.

[StrawberryZebra]

No MMO will survive on nothing but endless raids and dungeons with nothing between them.

It's easy to dismiss the idea out of hand, but I wonder if such a thing has ever been tried? Removing a lot of the MMO aspects but just leaving in the raids and dungeons might actually be the kind of thing that appeals to a lot of people.

Without any open world to worry about, the devs can focus their attention on group content exclusively. With no external systems to clutter up the game space, all design choices can be made with just one content niche in place. It's the kind of game where new content could be produced very quickly, and since everything would be it's own self-contained space, it wouldn't have any unintended consequences for the rest of the game.

Naturally, calling it an MMO would be disengenuous, but it would certainly be a Coop RPG. The kind you could jump into for 30 minutes and simply get things done without having to worry about all the other MMO systems layers on top. The kind where you could bring your friends without needing to go through X hours of leveling, grinding, gearing and so on. Just a no-nonsense raiding experience.

[Katchii]

Well, you get the abilities a few at a time and they have tool tips that indicate its use, so I wouldn't say it's completely unclear. I've never gone outside of the game to have to learn what the abilities are for, just the tooltip for a little more info. But I'm an MMO veteran, so thinking as a "what am this MMO genre" perspective....

To incorporate a tutorial aspect, they could give you the new ability during the quest's usual combat scenario and have you use it so you know its purpose, then upon successfully completing the quest, you get the ability added to your skill set.

Oh agreed, all it takes is some experience and reading skills to be able to figure it out, but for folks who aren't MMO veterans, it can be a chore putting 2 and 2 together to make the skills really jive and feel good the way it was meant to rather than stumble through it .

[Advent]

I would really, really like some new standby combat animations to the default ones. To be clear, I mean the stance your jobs are in when you are in combat and have an enemy targeted. Been playing Dark Knight recently and that stance is painful to look at.

[Faroth]

It's easy to dismiss the idea out of hand, but I wonder if such a thing has ever been tried? Removing a lot of the MMO aspects but just leaving in the raids and dungeons might actually be the kind of thing that appeals to a lot of people.

Without any open world to worry about, the devs can focus their attention on group content exclusively. With no external systems to clutter up the game space, all design choices can be made with just one content niche in place. It's the kind of game where new content could be produced very quickly, and since everything would be it's own self-contained space, it wouldn't have any unintended consequences for the rest of the game.

Naturally, calling it an MMO would be disengenuous, but it would certainly be a Coop RPG. The kind you could jump into for 30 minutes and simply get things done without having to worry about all the other MMO systems layers on top. The kind where you could bring your friends without needing to go through X hours of leveling, grinding, gearing and so on. Just a no-nonsense raiding experience.

Isn't that called MOBA?

[Miyani]

Well looking at the final eureka weapons it goes to show once again that the devs take no effort or player feedback into their designs. Feels like i wasted all my time in eureka for a half arsed glamour. They need to find someone who can make half decent weapons like the ARR relics again and get rid of whoever is making the latest sets. Also they clearly didn't test out their own content before release since only a few hours in and ppl are using the reflect logos to power lvl and are already max level and in the new dungeon...i see a hotfix coming shortly. less they really just don't give a damn anymore.

[Faroth]

I would really, really like some new standby combat animations to the default ones. To be clear, I mean the stance your jobs are in when you are in combat and have an enemy targeted. Been playing Dark Knight recently and that stance is painful to look at.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of DRK's awkward stance. I'd prefer even if they had just gone with Cloud's stance for combat ready.

I also wish they'd scrap the gender divide on idle stance cpose and let both male and female have both options to cycle through. A huge male Roe DRK would look awesome with the female cpose stance of the sword in front of them while I'm sure plenty of female characters would like to be able to rest it on their shoulder like Cloud.

I particularly was annoyed when the SAM ARR quests have you confront someone with a katana that's using your very own idle pose and your trainer says no true samurai would ever hold their sword like that. Female's idle cpose looks more appropriate with the sword out a bit and the other hand gripping the scabbard.

[Miyani]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of DRK's awkward stance. I'd prefer even if they had just gone with Cloud's stance for combat ready.

one of the reasons i could never get into playing ninja, their weapons drawn combat stance makes the player look like they have a hunch back and the visual i just couldnt get outta my head. That and weapons clip through so many armour pieces when drawn.

[Faroth]

one of the reasons i could never get into playing ninja, their weapons drawn combat stance makes the player look like they have a hunch back and the visual i just couldnt get outta my head. That and weapons clip through so many armour pieces when drawn.

Huh, I never noticed weapon clipping when drawn and I mained NIN in Heavensward. Maybe I chose glamours that avoided the problem without realizing it. Their stance didn't bug me, but it's a subjective thing so not saying "they're fine" or anything.

[Miyani]

Huh, I never noticed weapon clipping when drawn and I mained NIN in Heavensward. Maybe I chose glamours that avoided the problem without realizing it. Their stance didn't bug me, but it's a subjective thing so not saying "they're fine" or anything.

one of the worst ones in heavensward if i remember rightly was the primal set, the thing that looked like leviathan scales, the second you pulled any movement of be it turning around or any attack your blades would just sink right through the skirt like coat. I mained machinist in heavensward and i loved it >< now i don't use my mch except for idling around in nice looking gear. The heat mechanic ruined the fun for me on that job.

[Advent]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of DRK's awkward stance. I'd prefer even if they had just gone with Cloud's stance for combat ready.

I also wish they'd scrap the gender divide on idle stance cpose and let both male and female have both options to cycle through. A huge male Roe DRK would look awesome with the female cpose stance of the sword in front of them while I'm sure plenty of female characters would like to be able to rest it on their shoulder like Cloud.

I particularly was annoyed when the SAM ARR quests have you confront someone with a katana that's using your very own idle pose and your trainer says no true samurai would ever hold their sword like that. Female's idle cpose looks more appropriate with the sword out a bit and the other hand gripping the scabbard.

Speaking of Samurai I wish you could use THIS as your in combat pose. And perhaps, as you stated, THIS for Dark Knight as an option. The thing is, this kind of ancillary content is right up their alley. They add stuff like poses all the time so I could see them doing it if it's brought to their attention. It's one of the things I really like about the developers of this game. Much of what players ask for (within reason, of course) is implemented at some point down the line.

[StrawberryZebra]

Been playing Dark Knight recently and that stance is painful to look at.

Surprisingly enough, it's actually based on a real German longsword stance known as the Ochs Stance. As you can see from the image on the right, it's lifted almost directly from textbook examples.

As for how effective it was... I've certainly never challenged anyone to a sword fight to the death to find out. I don't plan on it either. I'd assume it was at least reasonably effective, otherwise no one who tried it would have lived long enough to actually write a textbook.

Isn't that called MOBA?

MOBA's are geared more towards PvP. What I was suggesting was a game where the only playable content was PvE Dungeons and Raiding. Unlike a MOBA, it would still have some form of gear persistance or progression systems, and wouldn't reset with each new game.

It would cut out the other parts of the MMO. The World, the Questing, Vendors and so on and keep only the bare essentials. I suppose you could call it a kind of Dungeon Crawler, though that title wouldn't really capture it either.