[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Granyala]

Sucked all of the atmosphere out of it.

And that was Hydaelyn's intent when she created them. She knew there would be panic and depression.
Yeah, the little ones are a wee bit over the top but it worked well in regards to her goals.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I wasn't talking about the invasion, the invasion was fine. The pacing was bad after that.

As for filler, the fish quest and the find engineers quest are two that spring immediately to mind.

The fish quest felt fine, it was your introduction to Matsaya. Such introductions often tell us that the character will be coming back, and isn't just some background NPC.

As far as finding engineers, there was a ton of interesting dialog not just from them, but from the other NPCs around the area, helping immerse into the world that is the research facility of Labyrinthos. On top of that, you ease the stress and burdens of many engineers by helping them with the problems they were trying to work through. That's not filler, that's actual story.



Here's the thing, "pacing" does not mean "The story is always interesting and fast paced," pacing is just a general term for rising and falling action, as well as presenting the audience with circumstances that are plot relevant. Yes, your conversations with the engineers does not DIRECTLY tie back in to the main purpose of Endwalker, but these are the people working on the space ship to get you there.

"Bad pacing" and "filler" means something that adds absolutely nothing to the story or the characters involved in said story. That's actually what's amazing about FFXIV story telling. Very few moments (maybe 3 or 4 in the ENTIRE story) are truly wasted. If an NPC comes up, cries that his family is being attacked by wild boars, you save them, they thank you, and you move on your way. That is filler. And putting that in between certain story beats would make it bad pacing. You never see those NPCs again, nor does what you did matter.

I see this happen a lot, where people blame the "slow" parts of the story as being filler when they're really not. They're slow. And that's intentional. Endwalker is filled with lots of highly emotionally charged scenes, high stakes, and intense moments. In good story telling you MUST HAVE MOMENTS OF REPRIEVE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS. Constant action and mystery and intrigue always coming at you wears the audience out. This is age-old. This sort of thing has been trialed and errored by movies, books, literature throughout the world.

So while both of the segments you mentioned were slow, they were not filler, as Matsaya comes back later and you're literally helping engineers solve problems they're having with the ship.

[Yarathir]

And that was Hydaelyn's intent when she created them. She knew there would be panic and depression.
Yeah, the little ones are a wee bit over the top but it worked well in regards to her goals.

I'm talking from an OOC perspective, how the writers handled that.

But that can also have to do with the fact that I didn't nearly have enough of a fill of the Garlemald and Final Days angst before they showed up to pop the bubble with their cartoony levity. I could've done with a little more doom and gloom. And while that is definitely subjective, it seems a lot of people share that opinion.

I was thankful for their existence after Elpis and after the the Mothercrystal trial, though. In shambles, I was. Like the pathetic Venat simp I am.

[eschatological]

I'm talking from an OOC perspective, how the writers handled that.

But that can also have to do with the fact that I didn't nearly have enough of a fill of the Garlemald and Final Days angst before they showed up to pop the bubble with their cartoony levity. I could've done with a little more doom and gloom. And while that is definitely subjective, it seems a lot of people share that opinion.

I was thankful for their existence after Elpis and after the the Mothercrystal trial, though. In shambles, I was. Like the pathetic Venat simp I am.

Personally, I agree. The best parts of EW were the remnants of the Empire and what it meant to move on from the supremacist ideas the Empire had drilled into them from day 1.

Outside of those zones, the only part that stuck out to me was Urangier saying goodbye to Moonbryda's parents. Somehow that 15 minutes was more impactful to me than anything that took place on the launchpad with the Scions and Forchanault (sp?) or between the Scions themselves.

Thavnair was just okay. As someone of Indian origin, it was a little jarring how....stereotypical? it was, but no more so than fighting primals named Shiva and Lakshmi. But the music in Radz-at-Han is easily the best of the expansion for me. Love those desi beats.

[Shinchi Migi]

I disagree. I'm a lore deep diver and enjoyed it. Yes there were times I was disappointed with HOW they addressed certain things, namely that the story did feel pretty rushed, but overall I think it was fine and I was entertained and enjoyed my experience in game, which was the point.

Yes, there were things wrong with it, but most of the criticism I've seen is based entirely on the game not lining up with their subjective vision of how it SHOULD have been vs how SE actually portrayed it, not anything objectively wrong with the game or the story. I don't go to the official forums, it's a gatekeeping cesspool of an echo chamber in my experience.

I do agree with you on the forums part. I don't go either. Wayyyyyyy tooo many damn sensitive ass nannies in there for my taste. You can't say a damn thing without getting reported by some white knight or some crazy karen that gets all pissed cause you don't agree with them. I would rather stick to these forums or reddit.

[Katchii]

So, a little topic change: How do people level?

I have all my melee/physical ranged at 90, my casters at 70, and all my tanks/healers at 60 (besides Sage which starts at 70).

I'm doing all my roulettes on my RDM/BLM/SMN, but the thought of grinding dungeons, even with the quick queues, on 8 other classes all the way to 90 makes me kinda ill. What alternative leveling stuff do you guys do?

I do have PotD (irrelevant now) and HoH unlocked. I'm also thinking of Eureka/Bozja for the tanks to grind stuff up for relic weapon/armor stuff.

Roulettes and Beast Tribe quests mainly, as they're the least nauseating. This works at most levels.

PotD from 1-60 and HoH from 60-70, if you can stomach it. It's boring AF but it's effective. I'm not sure how efficient it is compared to other alternatives but it works.

Squadrons are good, I was above the level ranges they were effective for at the time they were introduced so I never used them so can't comment much, but some people swear by them.

Eureka....I have not heard anything about it being effective for leveling. IIRC, you have to be level 70to even enter and you don't get class xp inside. Unless they changed something, you can't use it to level.

Bozja/Zadnor is effective, but just as brainless as PotD and HoH, and works from 70-80 and even up to 90. I don't know what the minimum level is to enter, I just know you need to have one job at 71+ to unlock it.

When I want gear but don't want to deal with randos or wait in a queue as a DPS I use the Trust/Duty Support system and do the dungeon a few times. I can't stomach more than that.

[eschatological]

I know a lot of you talk about Trusts, but I've never run a Trust dungeon where these dumb Scions did anything near approaching acceptable damage. Trust dungeons are always like 10 minutes longer than a pub.

I'd rather wait the 10 minutes in a queue than run a trust with the Scions.

[Thestrawman]

I know a lot of you talk about Trusts, but I've never run a Trust dungeon where these dumb Scions did anything near approaching acceptable damage. Trust dungeons are always like 10 minutes longer than a pub.

I'd rather wait the 10 minutes in a queue than run a trust with the Scions.

Did you expect them to be just as good as real people?

[Dakhath]

I know a lot of you talk about Trusts, but I've never run a Trust dungeon where these dumb Scions did anything near approaching acceptable damage. Trust dungeons are always like 10 minutes longer than a pub.

I'd rather wait the 10 minutes in a queue than run a trust with the Scions.

That's the point of them. They're still faster if you're a dps even without the aoe damage.

[eschatological]

I'd just love if my squadron could pick up jobs (instead of being stuck in base classes), and weren't level capped at 60.......cause that system allows them to wreck face.

Hell, if SE is so intent on making the game single player, they'd find a way to combine the squadron mastery system ranks with the Trust AI which manages to avoid all the AoE and do the mechanics, and then just put a restriction like having to do a dungeon with masteries suppressed or something, idk.

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That's the point of them. They're still faster if you're a dps even without the aoe damage.

Faster if you add in the queue time, sure, but I'd rather spend the queue doing nothing/doing work then losing my mind at how bad the Scions are for a continuous 30 minutes.

[CerealLord]

I know a lot of you talk about Trusts, but I've never run a Trust dungeon where these dumb Scions did anything near approaching acceptable damage. Trust dungeons are always like 10 minutes longer than a pub.

I'd rather wait the 10 minutes in a queue than run a trust with the Scions.

This is fair. I will usually wait in the queue unless its for DPS. Those I'll trust run because at least I am 1 of two DPS doing better numbers. I also use them when I just want to zone out and watch Netflix because chances are no one is dying.

[KrayZ33]

Faster if you add in the queue time, sure, but I'd rather spend the queue doing nothing/doing work then losing my mind at how bad the Scions are for a continuous 30 minutes.

You can do "double pulls" with Scions as well, not sure if there are certain DPS classes that have horrible AoE DPS as this is never really a metric worth exploring, but you can have wait times, miss an invite or have bad groups in FFXIV rather easily, especially during leveling.

I don't think they take that much longer tbh, considering that a player that actually cares to go through the dungeon ASAP is usually rare.

Squadron is surely a lot more fun though, because these guys kick ass and it's pretty chill to just be AFK leveling through dungeons.

[Katchii]

I know a lot of you talk about Trusts, but I've never run a Trust dungeon where these dumb Scions did anything near approaching acceptable damage. Trust dungeons are always like 10 minutes longer than a pub.

I'd rather wait the 10 minutes in a queue than run a trust with the Scions.

That's kind of the point. You don't have to wait in a queue and you don't have anyone competing with you over drops.

Yes it takes longer, usually about ~10 minutes because the NPCs don't mass pull (though you can do that yourself and they can typically handle at least two packs) and they only ever do single target damage. If a queue is 10 minutes and the extra time on a Trust duty is ~10 minutes, it's a wash.

No one said it was efficient, just that it is a viable option for grinding xp and/or gear from a dungeon if that's your goal.

[Yarathir]

One thing I like about Trusts is that I can kind of use them to help myself grow accustomed to a new job. I haven't healed in a game in over a decade, and even then I didn't do a lot of it. Recently, I picked up Sage, and Trusts create a stress-free environment where I can dip my toes into it, see what I can get away with. What works, what doesn't.

[Maljinwo]

Trusts are great for running a dungeon for the first time. Also their dialogues are welcome

[Aucald]

Trusts are great for running a dungeon for the first time. Also their dialogues are welcome

That's basically what I use Trusts for. I've found the NPCs tend to execute encounter positioning pretty much perfectly, even if their DPS/healing/tanking isn't the best - so I use them to learn the encounter and where I need to be and/or how to react to specific boss actions, so when I do them later in a player group I know what's coming.

[Cthulhu 2020]

One thing I thought of, re: "They didn't do enough apocalypse stuff with the final days"

They did mention in Elpis that the pockets of thinning aether happened gradually, over time. Time wise the FF story is pretty compact from quest to quest within an expansion or within a patch. There's very little canonical time passage in that regard. So basically almost immediately after we kill Zodiark, the final days are already happening in Thavnair, and that's when we start being able to do the role quests as well and get to experience the limited abominations popping up in the rest of the world. After Elpis, the final days hit Garlemald as well. Though honestly, you'd think a country destroyed by war would have the most despair, I'm guessing the mechanic of thinning aether isn't determined by how many sad people are there. That's two areas of the world that get affected seriously within the span of 2-3 days. In my mind, every time we return to Krile between zones, that feels like going to rest for the night. Kind of like our nightly visits with Ardbert in the first.

Sooooooo yeah, while it [B]might[/B] be a plot point purely to justify mechanics, which I don't even think is the case, they pretty much addressed why the apocalypse never got bad anywhere else. And that's just another reason I love the writing team. They can back up a lot of reasons for certain game mechanics with actual in game lore (Like even us being able to see projected AOEs being an affect of our echo). There is little I can think of that's like "Why is this game mechanic like this?" or "Why did this happen this way?" that doesn't have some kind of in universe explanation. It's refreshing after so many games, both single and online play, that just go "fuck you that's why".

[Caprias]

I'm leveling my missing jobs from 1-90 now which are 2 tanks and 2 healers and christ why are so many veterans so fricking garbage?

Like sprouts and returners I won't pay attention to but how can you have veterans with several level 90 jobs and/or the burgerking crown that still:
1.) Do not know how to press their god damn 1,2,3 (1,2,1,3, for our freestyle SAMs) AoE buttons when there are 3+ enemys present (I heard that happens quite often in w2w pulls)
2.) Do not use cooldowns at all, I don't ask for optimal cooldown usage but if you tank/heal w2w without using cd's (bonus points for the everything in one macro clown tanks) you're just asking for a wipe.
3.) Fail simple mechanics in level dungeons repeatedly they must've run dozens of times.
4.) DDs somehow failing their basic job kits so hard (goes hand in hand with not pressing aoe buttons) that despite adequate gear pulls take long enough for tank+healer to run out of defensive cooldowns and dungeon bosses taking as long as a savage raid boss.

I very much enjoy and partake in the positive overall environment in dungeons and will generally start to pull slower as a tank with sprout healers/groups by default, but the amount of braindead veteran/mentor players I've seen in the last few weeks make me miss to just call them out and kick them like you'd do in WoW a bit.

[Maljinwo]

I'm leveling my missing jobs from 1-90 now which are 2 tanks and 2 healers and christ why are so many veterans so fricking garbage?

I particularly dislike seeing people with the mentor icon on their name failing at mechanics several times in a row on low level dungeons.
I had a PLD with the mentor symbol last night that stood in front of the Flamethrower ability on Keeper of the Lake three times on a row
Also the healer had to ask him to use mitigation as he had died in a mob pull near the first boss.
And on Einhander.
And on the Gunship

And ok, I get it. It's just a leveling dungeon, no biggie. But these 'mentors' are supposed to guide new players

[Katchii]

One thing I like about Trusts is that I can kind of use them to help myself grow accustomed to a new job. I haven't healed in a game in over a decade, and even then I didn't do a lot of it. Recently, I picked up Sage, and Trusts create a stress-free environment where I can dip my toes into it, see what I can get away with. What works, what doesn't.

This, 100%.

Learning a new job, or new role, is really nice and stress free in a Duty Support/ Trust dungeon. The healing and tank NPC's are pretty decent, so if you're a healer or tank, you can learn the role you're filling quite well knowing if you wipe, it's probably YOUR fault, which helps learn what you can or can't do and what you should or shouldn't do next time.

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I particularly dislike seeing people with the mentor icon on their name failing at mechanics several times in a row on low level dungeons.
I had a PLD with the mentor symbol last night that stood in front of the Flamethrower ability on Keeper of the Lake three times on a row
Also the healer had to ask him to use mitigation as he had died in a mob pull near the first boss.
And on Einhander.
And on the Gunship

And ok, I get it. It's just a leveling dungeon, no biggie. But these 'mentors' are supposed to guide new players

It's lazy players thinking they don't have to do mechanics because "MeChAnIcS ArE fOr CaRs!!!one1" hurr durr

Like, I get wanting to be a bit lazy and casual in dungeons as you're playing sometimes, and I know most dungeons (especially the older ones) don't require all that much effort to roflstomp, but don't just phone it in and expect everyone else to simply adjust to your lazy ass play style.