[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[StrawberryZebra]

Fran is definitely the more popular "mascot character" despite not being the main lead of XII.

Which is understandable, Fran is the only one of the main cast with anything unique about her appearance. She's got immediately recognisable bunny ears, as well as heels and recognisable (Read: Revealing) clothing. The others are regular people in, more or less, regular clothing. There's nothing that really stands out about them at first glance.

Cloud had his giant sword and spikey hair that made him stand out, Squall had his, at the time, unique weapon and scar, even Zidane had his tail. Even Tidus had a visually colourful design, despite a lack of other distinguishing features. 12 had, err... Vaan and his washboard abs? I mean, I'm sure they were probably intended as eye candy, but they're not really enough to make him stand out. There are plenty of other musclebound guys in video games, but very few bunny girls.

Outside of that, Fran suffers from the same problem as Kimahri does. They've got a very unique appearance, but little else going for them. Talking a little bit funny isn't a substitute for personality. The only real element of their backstories we learn is that they both left their homes to live with Humans. It's why I'm a little disapointed both of them made it into FF14 - I would have prefered something native to FF14 rather than imported from other games.

Balthier on the other hand is charming, a master of witty repartee and all wrapped up in a Han Solo package. He embodies about what 3/5ths of the internet wish they were, in other words. He's got more broad character appeal rather than just pure sex appeal. It's why I figure he'll be along at some point in the story, FF14 hasn't ever really had a character like him.

[Faroth]

Cloud had his giant sword and spikey hair that made him stand out, Squall had his, at the time, unique weapon and scar, even Zidane had his tail. Even Tidus had a visually colourful design, despite a lack of other distinguishing features. 12 had, err... Vaan and his washboard abs? I mean, I'm sure they were probably intended as eye candy, but they're not really enough to make him stand out. There are plenty of other musclebound guys in video games, but very few bunny girls.

Penny Arcade demonstrated that FF9 didn't exist.

"7 had the big sword, 8 had the gun sword, 10 had the water sword. There was no 9."
"Yeah there was, the guy had a tail."
"A tail sword?"
"No, pretty sure it was just a tail."

[Granyala]

A lot of the people asking for Viera men to be added legitimately disgust me and I wish I could say more to counter them on the official forum without getting banned. I hope Yoshi-P doesn't appease them and instead adds Viera men that look like muscular adults if the gender lock is ever removed. Japan in general has started to - thankfully - move away from certain aesthetics, so I don't see a hugely successful game like FFXIV resorting to adding what those players desire. If they ever were added, I'd likely quit.

Actually I think it would be rather unique to see the extreme sexual dimorphism of the Au'ra reversed in the Viera race.

[MrTharne]

Penny Arcade demonstrated that FF9 didn't exist.

"7 had the big sword, 8 had the gun sword, 10 had the water sword. There was no 9."
"Yeah there was, the guy had a tail."
"A tail sword?"
"No, pretty sure it was just a tail."

I'd take Zidane's weapon (either the two daggers or the big double sided sword) before any of those.

Edit : Also Interview with YoshiP https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/
The translation for when did they decide to had Female Viera and Male Hrothgar is inaccurate someone on the official forum said :
"Just a note, that translation is not quite correct. What Yoshida said was that about 3 months after 4.0, they decided to implement Hrothgar. But they also wanted to make Viera. So the choice was between making female Hrothgar, or making female Viera. Meaning if they hadn't decided to make the female Viera, all we would have gotten would have been male and female Hrothgar."

So Male Viera was never even an option in their eyes because first they decided to make Hrothgar and then they chose between Female Hrothgar or Female Viera. Male Hrothgar was already lock and loaded.

[Katchii]

MCH is the one class I'm hoping gets some significant low level changes - It plays like a horrible broken mess. Probably because it is until you get to 70. Playing it at all is a bit of a chore, they should just overhaul the whole thing imo.

I honestly enjoyed MCH from 60-70, or at least ~64?-70 when you get the enhanced, "hot" version of the shots and legit manage your heat. I still don't like the random shot enhancement procs, but the new animations and heat management make the job a lot more satisfying and interesting to play than it was previously. I couldn't stand it in Heavensward.

[Onikaroshi]

I honestly enjoyed MCH from 60-70, or at least ~64?-70 when you get the enhanced, "hot" version of the shots and legit manage your heat. I still don't like the random shot enhancement procs, but the new animations and heat management make the job a lot more satisfying and interesting to play than it was previously. I couldn't stand it in Heavensward.

I wonder if they'll do anything with it at max... I know one of the main things people hate about mch is.... do a rotation do a rotation AHHHH OVERHEAT PRESS ALL THE BUTTONS IN A PERFECT SEQUENCE BUT YOU ONLY HAVE 10 SECONDS do a rotation do a rotation, repeat.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A lot of the people asking for Viera men to be added legitimately disgust me and I wish I could say more to counter them on the official forum without getting banned. I hope Yoshi-P doesn't appease them and instead adds Viera men that look like muscular adults if the gender lock is ever removed. Japan in general has started to - thankfully - move away from certain aesthetics, so I don't see a hugely successful game like FFXIV resorting to adding what those players desire. If they ever were added, I'd likely quit.

I'm not sure how Square Enix could appease the people who want male Viera. Whenever I go into threads asking for male Viera, it appears that everyone has a different idea in their head. Some people want cute little bunny boys like moogles from XII, while others appear to just want male Miq'ote with bunny ears, while others want something cool and sleak, so even if they picked one design, they might leave fans of another design unsatisfied.

Granblue Fantasy has a few cool looking male Erune characters.

[Faroth]

The real travesty is that FFXIV will go down in history as yet another MMO that did not give me a playable fox race. For a bit, I thought WoW was going to beat 'em to the punch, but it's looking more likely that theirs will remain an NPC race after all.

So far Vanguard is the only MMO that had the option. Sadly, Vanguard wanted to fly immediately into the sun from the get go and was doomed from the start.

Gimme a fox tailed race, demmit.

Additionally, I wish they'd go back and recode the fox ears from the FATE to work like the wolf ears from Halloween. Miqo look ridiculous wearing the fox ears and having 4 ears as a result while everyone else can actually wear 'em and look reasonable. T-T

[MrTharne]

Rewatching/reading the Lore about the Crystal Tower in the inn before the big finale tomorrow because I don't remember shit from it.

[Katchii]

Balthier on the other hand is charming, a master of witty repartee and all wrapped up in a Han Solo package. He embodies about what 3/5ths of the internet wish they were, in other words. He's got more broad character appeal rather than just pure sex appeal. It's why I figure he'll be along at some point in the story, FF14 hasn't ever really had a character like him.

Thancred kind of fills that role, though he's more Lando than Han. He's at least witty and charming, just not as gritty and swashbuckler-y.

[StrawberryZebra]

I honestly enjoyed MCH from 60-70, or at least ~64?-70 when you get the enhanced, "hot" version of the shots and legit manage your heat. I still don't like the random shot enhancement procs, but the new animations and heat management make the job a lot more satisfying and interesting to play than it was previously. I couldn't stand it in Heavensward.

Mine is currently only in the 40's, and the job is absolutely awful to play. I've never held "it gets better at end game" to be a reasonable argument in it's favour - Having to slog through a broken mess to get to the "good" part of a job is just terrible for the player.

I've always maintained that a Job, Class or whatever nomenclature your game decides to go with, should be fun right from the off. It should sell you on the premise by the time you're, say... Level 10 at the latest. It's where FF14's more modular design lets it down, the Jobs get mechanics added on in "stages" as you complete the expansions rather than making the important abilities available earlier on for a more cohesive experience.

I'm hoping they choose to revisit that too in Shadowbringers. Making jobs that are fun and playable at all levels should be a priority, especially when you'll be doing roulettes and can lose key abilities as a result.

Granblue Fantasy has a few cool looking male Erune characters.

On that note, I'm quite looking forwards to seeing what ArcSys can do with Granblue Fantasy Versus later this year. Lowain has already been confirmed, probably with more Fox-boys to follow later on.

And yes, I'm prepared for the inevitable BlazBlue/Granblue crossover, with Arcana Heart and Jaune from RWBY thrown in as guest characters from lootboxes, of course. Cygames tend to take monetisation to the absolute extreme, even for mobile games.

[Katchii]

I wonder if they'll do anything with it at max... I know one of the main things people hate about mch is.... do a rotation do a rotation AHHHH OVERHEAT PRESS ALL THE BUTTONS IN A PERFECT SEQUENCE BUT YOU ONLY HAVE 10 SECONDS do a rotation do a rotation, repeat.

I don't remember that being the case with the rotation. Granted, I didn't play it seriously or try to min max performance, but is purposely overheating a thing? I'd expect that properly managing your heat would be more beneficial because once you overheat, you get that 10 second buffed window followed by 10 seconds of no Gauss Barrel and no increased ability potency or heat generation whatsoever. That would feel clunky AF to me.

As it worked at max, I thought it was rather elegant, but more importantly to me, was that the abilities were satisfying to use. The visual and sound effect felt good and were quite appealing.

I just couldn't choose to play MCH over my RDM though. RDM just feels so much better to me with all the utility it has. Now that I can't stand SMN game play, RDM is my new main I think. Will have to wait and see how DNC ends up measuring up.

- - - Updated - - -

Mine is currently only in the 40's, and the job is absolutely awful to play. I've never held "it gets better at end game" to be a reasonable argument in it's favour - Having to slog through a broken mess to get to the "good" part of a job is just terrible for the player.

I've always maintained that a Job, Class or whatever nomenclature your game decides to go with, should be fun right from the off. It should sell you on the premise by the time you're, say... Level 10 at the latest. It's where FF14's more modular design lets it down, the Jobs get mechanics added on in "stages" as you complete the expansions rather than making the important abilities available earlier on for a more cohesive experience.

I'm hoping they choose to revisit that too in Shadowbringers. Making jobs that are fun and playable at all levels should be a priority, especially when you'll be doing roulettes and can lose key abilities as a result.

Complete agree on the concept. FFXIV suffers heavily from this. The classes/jobs feel severely lacking at lower levels. However, I can say with certainty that every job DOES get better as you get higher level. I have all but DRG and NIN at 70, but even they are 62 and 60 respectively. Everything gets a more fleshed out kit as you level and things mesh well (though the design across classes is pretty similar) and you feel more active in battle. You just have to get all the synergistic abilities, which really sucks, because some don't get those until WAY late.

This is one area where FFXIV could do better. I understand they're trying to introduce mechanics slowly, and space out abilities so that you don't have too many, but the core game play of some classes changes multiple times as you level up, which is ridiculous.

Hopefully this is something that gets addressed in the combat update. The core game play of a class should get introduced relatively early with any new skills just adding to it, not fundamentally changing how you play the class. Black Mage was one of my most hated classes to level because of how differently it okays depending on what level you are/ what dungeon you get synced to.

[Rogalicus]

IMO biggest change for DRG is Lance Mastery, it makes rotation much smoother. Mirage Dive and BotD/LotD can go die in the fire though, especially on bosses that love to fly around for a minute doing pretty much nothing, while you are looking at ticking timer and shout "Just fucking land".

[Katchii]

IMO biggest change for DRG is Lance Mastery, it makes rotation much smoother. Mirage Dive and BotD/LotD can go die in the fire though, especially on bosses that love to fly around for a minute doing pretty much nothing, while you are looking at ticking timer and shout "Just fucking land".

Yup. If they're going to continue to implement encounters with mechanics like this, why the fuck do they keep creating classes with skills and rotations that so heavily rely on shit like this. DRG isn't the only one that has this problem.

[Daedius]

Completely abandoned WoW to give FF 14 a go. Been playing for the past 2 weeks, with a kind fella giving me Heaven and Blood for free -- kinda overwhelmed with the amount of things to do.

Thoroughly enjoying it though.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Completely abandoned WoW to give FF 14 a go. Been playing for the past 2 weeks, with a kind fella giving me Heaven and Blood for free -- kinda overwhelmed with the amount of things to do.

Thoroughly enjoying it though.

Glad you're enjoying it! Give the Gold Saucer a go if you haven't already

Quick tip: You can easily acquire great level 50/60/70 gear by simply queuing for your daily Frontline challenge (unlocked at level 30), which is a fun ten minute long PvP battleground. You're guaranteed 1000 PvP marks win or lose, and it only costs about 10k marks to fully gear yourself. The moment I dinged 50 on my Dragoon, I ported straight to the Wolves Den and bought myself a full set of 110 gear.

[Kaelwryn]

Don't really need to do that, unless you really want to. Lv50/60/70 job quests give you gear, plus the post msq for arr and hw also give you gear. sb post msq will give gear when shadowbringers launches. Not to mention that stormblood's pvp gear is lvl 1 glamour stuff so that's not an option for lvl 70.

[Onikaroshi]

Without going too crazy in depth, yes, to get the best dps you are on an overheat rotation, with wildfire

[Katchii]

Without going too crazy in depth, yes, to get the best dps you are on an overheat rotation, with wildfire

Timed with certain phases of the fight I'm assuming? Or just timing your Overheat window with Wildfire and other cooldowns to give a 10 second window of crazy burst, followed by a 10 second window of sub par DPS? If that's the math, that's how it works, but that sounds awful to play as IMO.

That's part of why I stopped playing SMN even though I love the aesthetic and the overall gameplay, because of how heavily the entire class leans on that ~15 second window with Bahamut that takes 90 seconds, at best, to reach. I just can't play a class with mechanics built like that in a game where most of the boss encounters have windows of invulnerability that render that amazing game play cooldown completely useless or pointless.

Another reason I really enjoy RDM.

[leviathonlx]

Yup. If they're going to continue to implement encounters with mechanics like this, why the fuck do they keep creating classes with skills and rotations that so heavily rely on shit like this. DRG isn't the only one that has this problem.

At the very least I want skills like Heavy Thrust removed and the damage baked into the job. Skills like that serve no purpose in a rotation outside having a button just for the sake of having a button.