[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[TriHard]

I tried palace of the dead first time today and man is it boring...

Just get the proper group in there and you might enjoy it more. I've had days when I've done nothing but grind POTD.
I think I'm about to reach the point in the SB story where I unlock HoH so I'm looking forward to seeing that too.

[TriHard]

Problem with HoH is you can only do the first 30 floors with group finder.
You need a pre made group to go higher, so unless you are in an active fc or have friends you play with, good luck ever going higher.

Are the first 30 floors good for leveling though?

[Super Kami Dende]

By the looks of it pets wont exist as actual characters anymore and just a continuous spell effect like the WAR and DRK auras. Its the only change i'm really not fond of.

You still control the pets to some extent, they just don't have their own Hotbars anymore.

[Granyala]

I don't understand why so many people are confusing the "pure healing" statement. It has absolutely nothing to do with doing less damage. You can see Astro getting an upgraded Malefic, WHM has a new attack and such. They're basically saying they want to move away from things like one healer being a shield healer and one heal not, and making them all a sort of "pure healer" that have mostly similar toolkits. That's it. Because balancing something like a SCH is very difficult, and by making them function a bit more closely, with giving them something that lets them remain unique ie SCH still having shields of sorts, it allows them to more easily balance the healers and more easily add new ones in the future. If your takeaway is that you're not going to be doing more damage and you'll be spending 100% of your time healing due to them adjusting outgoing damage you're probably wrong.

Yeah, I reckon they wouldn't dare to change the green DPS design too fundamentally because the QQ would be epic.
Guess I keep massaging the button for mediocre - below tank level - DPS.

<_<

- - - Updated - - -

I tried palace of the dead first time today and man is it boring...

I heard it gets interesting once you get past floor 120 or so.
Only did it up to 50 and yup... watching a bot do it's thing in WoW was more entertaining.

[dope_danny]

You still control the pets to some extent, they just don't have their own Hotbars anymore.

From the stream it looks as though they are just a permanent visual effect and their skills are reduced to a single move like "Egi Attack I" as part of your own rotation. They listed that Topaz Carbuncle and Titan Egi aren't tanks anymore because they don't have an actual in world model for enemy mobs to interact with anymore. Its like the Red Mage Cystal or gauss barrel. Its a visual part of the job but doesn't actually count as something independent of the player anymore if what the stream got across was correct.

[Super Kami Dende]

From the stream it looks as though they are just a permanent visual effect and their skills are reduced to a single move like "Egi Attack I" as part of your own rotation. They listed that Topaz Carbuncle and Titan Egi aren't tanks anymore because they don't have an actual in world model for enemy mobs to interact with anymore. Its like the Red Mage Cystal or gauss barrel. Its a visual part of the job but doesn't actually count as something independent of the player anymore if what the stream got across was correct.

Hmmm yeah, rewatching the Animations Video you look to be correct. Unfortunate though not unexpected i guess with a removal of the Hotbar.

I'm curious how this will affect Chocobo. If they will be changing the companion in anyway as well.

[Kaelwryn]

Hmmm yeah, rewatching the Animations Video you look to be correct. Unfortunate though not unexpected i guess with a removal of the Hotbar.

I'm curious how this will affect Chocobo. If they will be changing the companion in anyway as well.

Doubtful, chocobo isn't controllable beyond deciding which stance you want it to be in.

[StrawberryZebra]

Healers
Healers will be thoroughly rebalanced to emphasize a pure healing role. Protect has been removed from the game. New actions will be added to address gaps in each healer’s repertoire. Offensive actions will be reviewed for healers.

This really caught my attention. I'm not sure if it's worded badly, perhaps as a result of translation, but it seems to be very contradictory from the outset.

I assume that by "rebalancing to emphasize a pure healing role" they're going to move them all more towards just straight forward healing spells rather than having Shields and other absorbs in there too. While there may be some shielding, it won't ever really be the focus of a healing job the way it is now.

But with "Offensive Actions will be reviewed", it does make it sound as though they're also removing a lot of the opportunities for healers to do DPS when they're not doing anything else. Taken together with the rest of the statement gives the impression they want healers to be healing full time. That's not really a healthy game state in my opinion. It pigeonholes healers into pressing their 1 key for 20 minutes while the rest of the group clears the dungeon. There needs to be something in there to break up the constant stream of healing to keep play interesting.

I have floated the idea of having healer MP be a valuable resource that needs to be managed in the past as one potential way to solve this problem, but that was met with far more pushback than I antcipated.

Also can't find anything mentioned about the things that are really important to me though. Like UI improvements, because it's still bloated, unwieldly and looks like it's been designed for form rather than function. It's far too inflexible for it's own good. The Job Gauges especially are a complete chore to set up for each individual job. Just... Make a universal toggle in the UI options like everybody else. Don't make me go into through two submenu's just for a simple toggle.

I mean seriously, WoW's UI is better right out of the box than I could ever hope to make FF14's. This shit isn't hard, yet Squenix somehow manage to keep making it worse. If they're too lazy they can let players hook up their own addons and let them solve the issue for themselves.

M+ is hands down the best feature to grace MMO's since Flex raiding to be honest. It's not perfect, but it's an extraordinarily well designed scaling challenge for small parties. Sure it blends into raiding a bit and diminishes it, but I didn't interpret that as a bad thing (former top 20 US raider).

There are issues with a couple of the Affixes for M+, but by and large you're right. It gives you a new take on familar dungeons that change regularly, as well as allows you to scaled the difficulty as hich as you're able to. For repeatable small group content, it ticks all the right boxes.

[Onikaroshi]

But with "Offensive Actions will be reviewed", it does make it sound as though they're also removing a lot of the opportunities for healers to do DPS when they're not doing anything else. Taken together with the rest of the statement gives the impression they want healers to be healing full time. That's not really a healthy game state in my opinion. It pigeonholes healers into pressing their 1 key for 20 minutes while the rest of the group clears the dungeon. There needs to be something in there to break up the constant stream of healing to keep play interesting.

considering the fact that they've added new offensive abilities to all healers and none of the leaks are showing huge decreases in previous offensive abilities, I don't think they're removing healer DPS, they may (hopefully) finally rebalance things to needing more healing though.

[GreenJesus]

It can be boring, but can also kill you if you don't keep your whits.
If you have a holy trinity group it's cake.
If you don't have a healer, that's when it can get tricky if you aren't with decent players

Funny story. the first time I did it we were a group of only archers. We just destroyed everything.

[dope_danny]

Doubtful, chocobo isn't controllable beyond deciding which stance you want it to be in.

Its probably counted as part of the same system as Squadrons and Trust.

[GreenJesus]

must have been good players, luckily for you

I MEan it was only floor 1-10

[MrTharne]

This really caught my attention. I'm not sure if it's worded badly, perhaps as a result of translation, but it seems to be very contradictory from the outset.

I assume that by "rebalancing to emphasize a pure healing role" they're going to move them all more towards just straight forward healing spells rather than having Shields and other absorbs in there too. While there may be some shielding, it won't ever really be the focus of a healing job the way it is now.

Yes, Pure healer is the Regen Healer like WHM and AST@Diurnal, they addressed them as such during previous interviews.
Healer's DPS isn't going anywhere.

[Remilia]

By the looks of it pets wont exist as actual characters anymore and just a continuous spell effect like the WAR and DRK auras. Its the only change i'm really not fond of.

Yeah that's what I'm afraid of. While sure I can be lazy still cause fairy, I just can't be as lazy. >.>

[MrTharne]

I don't know what look I want to give my Hrothgar...I like all the faces except for Face 1 Hairstyle 2.

Popularity wise I see :
-Face 2 "The Tiger" being the clear winner,
-Face 4 "The Ronso" and Face 1 "The Lion" close to each other,
-Face 3 "The Coeurl" trailing behind.

The Losts seem to be favored except for Face 2 "The Tiger" because of the markings.

Some of those Skin colors needs to be toned down I think, the Pink and Yellow for Helions. I don't really have a problem with the Blue and Green from The Losts.

[dope_danny]

I don't know what look I want to give my Hrothgar...I like all the faces except for Face 1 Hairstyle 2.

Popularity wise I see :
-Face 2 "The Tiger" being the clear winner,
-Face 4 "The Ronso" and Face 1 "The Lion" close to each other,
-Face 3 "The Coeurl" trailing behind.

The Losts seem to be favored except for Face 2 "The Tiger" because of the markings.

Some of those Skin colors needs to be toned down I think, the Pink and Yellow for Helions. I don't really have a problem with the Blue and Green from The Losts.

Heavensward game us the male Au Ra sonic cosplays, Shadowbringers gives us the Hrothgar Blanka's.

[StrawberryZebra]

Yes, Pure healer is the Regen Healer like WHM and AST@Diurnal, they addressed them as such during previous interviews.
Healer's DPS isn't going anywhere.

Good to know they're not going to force healers to stand around doing nothing - Even if that is something most would prefer to do.

Though I can't help but think they're taking the easy way out with regards to balancing issues, and creating a couple more in the process. On the one hand, it's a simple way to resolve the Shielding vs Direct Healing problems, if there are no healers that are specialised in shielding then the problem resolves itself. On the other, if HPS is ever an issue then the healer that pushes out the most is going to be the de-facto best. If HPS is normalised across the board, then whichever brings either the most support tools or DPS is going to be the best.

Shadowbringers gives us the Hrothgar Blanka's.

It's funny you mentioned this, trying to create a Blanka look alike was quite literally the first thing I thought of when I watched a stream where they were going over the character creation options.

It's probably the most interesting you could make your character look. I spent 6 hours one weekend trying to make my character look like a reject from a Kiss cover band - Vaguely Goth-esque was about the closest I got. I also tried the Punk Rock look and that was out, so was having a traditional Wizard look and even a hair cut that's a decent set of cornrows is out.

FF14 just really doesn't seem to let you have too much fun with your appearence outside of dressing up as other characters from the FF series or otherwise looking generically Anime.

[Kazgrel]

Welp, I haven't wanted to play XIV at all since the Live Letter and job action preview video. Gief ShB plz.

I may be one of the few Highlanders left standing with the impending bunnyocalypse.

[threads]

DRG looks amazing in the actions trailer. Monk finally getting gl4 and a new chakra spender. I thought bard, samurai, and red mage were disappointing though tbh.

[-aiko-]

I didn't dislike the Viera from the benchmark tool, but I just love my catgirl too much. I can't wait to see her as a Dancer <3