[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Samurai feels like it has been gutted. Not only has Kaiten been removed, which harms the class fantasy of charging up your sheathed sword for a powerful swing and making the gameplay less engaging, your AoEs now deal damage in a circle around you, rather than a targeted cone. Rather than repositioning around packs of enemies trying to line up your AoEs, you now just run into the middle of a pack and stand there pressing 1+2 over and over again until the pack is dead.

[eschatological]

Gutting? I guess you can play dragoon if you want to line up AoEs constantly.

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I think it just says the price and if its a free company or private bid. You put the money down and get a number but i dont think it tells you how many bids there are unless i missed it.

I just assume certain ones like the one near the snowmen and igloo or market board will get way more bids.

It definitely shows you how many bids it has. This is my own screenshot:

[xmirrors]

According to whom?

Uh did you actually read the post?

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Might post my story thoughts later on but a quick summary of 6.1: fun. I enjoy the new PvP, most of the class changes were good, the dungeon was good and the Alliance raid was phenomenal (at least mechanically, not sure how I feel about the story yet).

[Lane]

The changes to the ARR dungeons are nice from what I've seen. Copperbell went from stand around and do nothing to needing to dodge mechanics. Sastasha looks like a rave now, all neon and glowy except for the end where you really get to see the open area behind the last boss better. Toto-Rak is actually... pretty?! The sucking webs and leaden effect removed and so much lighting added I don't know if some of the environments with water and tree roots were always there and I never noticed or if the whole dungeon got remodeled. Stone Vigil got rid of all the mobs in the side rooms and drastically cut down on the amount of aevis mobs. The second boss is great now too, no more enclosed room and having to man canons, the encounter happens on an open rampart with Ishgard in the background.

The housing districts on my server are laughable. I kept wondering why the plot I wanted had no bids on it in several wards only to find out that they're all FC only. I didn't tour all the private housing districts, but of the ones I did there were at least 20 bids on the same plot. I decided to just go with an apartment though.

The MSQ was meh. I get the feeling there are more previous game callbacks because people are excited about stuff that meant nothing to me. Given my disappointment with 6.0, I feel I have to temper my expectations as to where the story is going next. I did love the familiar conjuring hypocrisy. :P

[RampageBW1]

I like that they added an Aetherial Portal at the second boss in Haukke Manor. No more having to waste a cooldown on your return ability just to teleport back to the start of the duty.

[eschatological]

There's some small plots on my server with less than a handful of bids, but it was day 1 and they have til Saturday to accumulate bids. I'm not hopeful. Seems like the plots next to the abyss are more sought after, while the ones next to the Cathedral aren't.

I already have an apartment, so, meh. TBH, I like the Kugane neighborhood where my apartment is right now, than the Firmament - but a house is better than an apartment just for the gardening.

[dlld]

Haven't played in a while, got some weird required login stuff, bought/play through steam and apparently now you have to link your square account to your steam account which.. i thought was already automatically done when you bought the game through steam anyway since it's not compatible with non steam version, weird.

[neik]

I like that they added an Aetherial Portal at the second boss in Haukke Manor. No more having to waste a cooldown on your return ability just to teleport back to the start of the duty.

I agree with you. I just hit level 44 with my warrior doing ARR dungeons alone, the changes are quite nice. It seems that they also focused on improving lighting in places where it was fairly dark previously. Bonus to SE on improving some fights as well.

Duty Support is such a nice addition to the game, leveling after hours or skipping queues with dps jobs is so cool. Fingers crossed for Heavensward and Stormblood in near future.

[eschatological]

Is there a reason to not level DPS via Duty Support as opposed to Grand Company Squadron missions?

[Lane]

Is there a reason to not level DPS via Duty Support as opposed to Grand Company Squadron missions?

I haven't tried Duty Support, but I'm going to guess the difference is speed depending on your Squadron roster. My main team is maxed out on Offensive Mastery, so they do a lot of bonus damage and Arcanists have a powerful AoE. Doing Aurum Vale, for example, takes about 12 minutes. I suppose it also depends on how much you want to micromanage your squadron, but I've only noticed that being an issue on non-MSQ dungeons (Halatali, Dzemael Darkhold) that there isn't Duty Support for anyway.

You can always pick an MSQ dungeon run it once with DS and again with your best Squadron lineup and see which is more efficient.

Edit: Okay, I did Haukke Manor with Duty Support. (Looks nice, love the changes to the last boss.) Squadrons should definitely be faster if you have the right composition and mastery, but for some dungeons you won't have a choice.

[eschatological]

Well, I'm done with MSQ, I'm just thinking leveling alt jobs.

And yeah, my squadron is built for full offensive mastery. Well worth the GC seal costs.

[dope_danny]

Theres some neat easter eggs, pun not intended, this time around for the easter event.

Like how you can find Gaius and his daughter in chicken outfits and he threatens you if you tell anyone about it

[Poppincaps]

Been playing PVP every chance I get since Tuesday. Currently Diamond 4. Overall, it's a very fun mode. The matches are short and sweet. My issues currently stem from the lack of balance in the jobs but also in terms of the comps you get. Sometimes you get stomped because the other team just had a better comp which is annoying. It is nice that you can't drop out of a tier once you get to it though, so grinding to the next tier feels like a sign of relief. Although now that I'm in Diamond basically every match goes into intense overtime, but that doesn't stop people from rushing in 1v5 or not pushing the crystal. In fact, I feel like at this level most of the people just want to go on slaughtering sprees.

What I'm really impressed with is the job designs. They managed to make small simple kits with a lot of flavor and complexity. Wish they would extend that to their PVE class design. It's frustrating how most DPS jobs are these long static rotations with no real decision making incorporated. I hate PVE MCH for instance, but PVP MCH is great.

[VMSmith]

I've decided to give FFXIV a 4th or 5th attempt, but this time with a fresh viewpoint towards the game. The times I've played previously I was still infected with the WoW syndrome of endgame being all that mattered so you should rush to it to get to the good stuff, causing me to stumble as I came across the brick wall known as MSQ. I even bought a skip of ARR the last time I played but just lost interest before really getting into Heavensward.

This time, however, I'm coming at the game with the thought that the story is maybe the main point of the game and the MMO bits are just there to provide some activities to keep me occupied when not doing the story. I'm still interested in those MMO bits, though, and they've always seemed more to my taste in FFXIV than WoW because I have no interest in organized activities, vastly preferring to queue for what I wish to do. And FFXIV doesn't seem inclined to punish players for having that preference, as WoW does.

So, what should I be looking at doing other than the MSQ? My main character that I'll likely be playing is a level 60 Ninja just finding his way around Ishgard. Should I just do the MSQ only? Or is there any other activities that might pique my interest? Particularly MMO bits, like dungeons and such. I'm not interested in grinding (which is why I don't ask about reputations), just having some fun in small bites when the mood strikes me.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So, what should I be looking at doing other than the MSQ? My main character that I'll likely be playing is a level 60 Ninja just finding his way around Ishgard. Should I just do the MSQ only? Or is there any other activities that might pique my interest? Particularly MMO bits, like dungeons and such. I'm not interested in grinding (which is why I don't ask about reputations), just having some fun in small bites when the mood strikes me.

Besides the MSQ, there are about 3 side questlines per expansion: the 12 boss raid storyline, the trial storyline, and the 24 man alliance raid storyline.

You can do the trial and raid questlines if you want. They can be completed in a few hours. If you've beaten the 3.0 MSQ, you can do the Alexander raid storyline which is about investigating a giant steampunk robot in which 12 boss fights take place, the Warring Triad questline which is about fighting those three primals in Azys Lla, or the Void Ark questline which is about three alliance raids (LFR raids) where you investigate ancient ruins and fight demons. You can queue through the duty finder/LFR tool for all of them. None of these storylines are plot important.

The Stormblood 12 boss raid storyline follows up on a minor MSQ plot thread. The trial and alliance raids have nothing to do with the main story. The alliance raid story is written by Yasumi Matsuno (written by Yasumi Matsuno, aka the creator of Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and FF12), so if you like his stories you will probably like the alliance raid story. There is also a questline set in a grind zone called Eureka, which is about exploring an island with monsters on it. There is a herculean amount of grinding involved and it is inadvisable to do that content if you're looking for story.

The Shadowbringers 12 boss raid features a couple Scion characters if you really like them and want more of them. The trial questline is pretty fun, IMO. The alliance raid is Nier Automata fanservice with a very confusing, poorly told story. Only play that if you want glamours from it or are a Nier fan. The ShB grind zone story involves liberating the country of Bozja from the Empire, and is also written by Yasumi Matsuno. There is less grind involved and more meat to the story. But if you don't want to grind then skip it.

There is a comedy questline called Hildibrand, and there is one per expansion. There is hardly any gameplay involved; it's just watching a comedy anime but in the FFXIV engine. You're not even the protagonist of the story. The ARR one is actually pretty funny and is worth checking out, at least.

The Gold Saucer (casino) has some minigames that are fun to indulge in for a bit. Chocobo racing, triple triad (card game), mahjong, and jumping puzzles.

The Blue Mage job involves hunting down monsters, fighting them, and acquiring their abilities. You can become very powerful. However, you can use the duty finder/LFR tool to queue with other random players as a blue mage, and blue mages are currently capped at level 70, so there isn't much content you can do as a blue mage.

Besides that... there isn't much left in the way of meaningful content. There are MoP-style daily reputation storylines called "Beast Tribes", but that requires months of timegating for... not very interesting story content.

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There are also job questlines, but I would hardly recommend that you waste so much time grinding up jobs just so you can see their storylines, when you could just play another game. But if you're looking to level up other jobs and their storylines are factoring into your choice, then I'd say that the best job storylines were Samurai 50-60 and Gunbreaker 60-70. The rest were not very memorable.

[dope_danny]

So after more time pvp'ing in an mmo than i've done since heavensward or maybe cataclysm this seems to be the power tier for pvp in my experience

Most overpowered and will probably get a range nerf:
-Samurai
Extremely Strong
-Warrior
-Dragon
-Ninja
Strong
-Red Mage
-Machinist
-White Mage
-Bard
-Astrologian
-Sage
-Summoner
Average
-Dark Knight
-Dancer
-Monk
-Reaper
Weak
-Black Mage
-Gunbreaker
-Scholar
Do not bother
-Paladin

With the no shock meta in ranked being Warrior, White Mage, Samurai, Machinist, and Ninja or Dragoon.

Player skill can definitely make a difference, especially for jobs like ninja or summoner but in terms of raw baseline "this tilts the match in your favour" thats what i'm seeing from crystalline conflict especially.

[TriHard]

There are also job questlines, but I would hardly recommend that you waste so much time grinding up jobs just so you can see their storylines, when you could just play another game. But if you're looking to level up other jobs and their storylines are factoring into your choice, then I'd say that the best job storylines were Samurai 50-60 and Gunbreaker 60-70. The rest were not very memorable.

This man really just slept on the DRK storyline, smh

[dlld]

Haven't played since more or less endwalker release, played the new MSQ until I got slapped with 560 ilvl requirement for new dungeon, quickest/cheapest way to meet it?

[xmirrors]

Crafted gear on the market board is 580 and will be the quickest, but depending on server, may not be cheap.

If you want to spend minimal gil the two 90 dungeons (Smileton/Stigma) drop 560 and the Aphorism tomestone gear is 570. Also, you probably already have, but make sure you've purchased your Job Gear from the vendor in Old Sharlayan.

[RampageBW1]

Man, I can't believe you can't skip Castrum/Praetorium cutscenes in Duty Support. They're still worth doing for poetic farming, but being forced to sit through cutscenes when you are the only player there seems like a weird decision.