[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[KrayZ33]

Hope their systems somehow detect people using this and bans them. Que's are bad enough, we don't need people downloading programs and shit to try to beat them and just making them worse for everyone else.

Nah, never going to happen.

The only thing that works against it is a forced log out at least once per day.

[Zora-Prime]

Nah, never going to happen.

The only thing that works against it is a forced log out at least once per day.

My buddy stays online and doesn't get kicked out by staying in a cutscene.
Is that a common trick that people use?

[Cren]

My buddy stays online and doesn't get kicked out by staying in a cutscene.
Is that a common trick that people use?

Oh gotta try that! So tired of getting in to 2-3 hour queue as soon as i go for a walk outside or do something else besides playing FF14. And that's not counting if you get the so much fun 2002 error on top of the queue.

[everydaygamer]

I usually just occasionally move my character around to stay logged in but if I'm actually leaving the house or working I'll log out.

[Tenjen]

I legit forgot they changed summoner so when I did the final boss and saw primals being summoned, I was like "wow they're throwing everything at this boss".

I used my abilities in a trial and a Legend tank said he panicked for a long while because of UWU ptsd making him shit himself thinking the boss had a cyclical primal mechanic

[RampageBW1]

[QUOTE=MrPaladinGuy;53510750]Once again, a treat for those that hate queues

--- snip ---

Please don't, my current queue is slow enough as it is, I don't need people cheesing the system so they don't have to deal with queues, thereby making the queues go by even slower. ;_;

[zealo]

Hope their systems somehow detect people using this and bans them. Que's are bad enough, we don't need people downloading programs and shit to try to beat them and just making them worse for everyone else.

Bans are a bit too heavy handed, they just need to start doing rolling resets daily at around 9 or so in the morning server time.

Late enough for many to have to leave for work before it happens, but it’s early enough otherwise that it would just be a minor inconvenience at best for anyone playing at that hour when the auto-afkers get ousted too.

[dope_danny]

Finished all the side quests so now seen all the 6.0 story content bar Pandemonium for obvious reasons. Overall i love Endwalker but i prefer Shadowbringers. To me it feels like FF expansions have two flavours: the closed loop conflict or the world wide road trip. With Heavensward and Shadowbringers being the former centered around Ishgard and Norvrandt and Stormblood and Endwalker being the later with jaunts all over.

The latter isn't bad but i find myself in both stormblood and endwalker going "this zone was here for the story far more than it serves a purpose in an mmorpg" whereas i'm still going back to places like Dravnia and Ill Mehg and feeling like its a lived in zone. I guess its just how the story facilitates the design but after sitting on it i think i just find myself caring way more about Norvrandt and characters like the chais, the folks at the crystarium or ardbert as i do the Fortemps or the first brood in dravania that i just don't really for characters in places like Othar or Mare Lamentorum.

Not to shit on the whole thing and god knows 6.1 onwards could go in all kinds of great directions and this needed the worldwide scale for the scope of its story but i think i just prefer the ones where we focus on one location so all the zones and people have an interconnected history.

[Lane]

My ranking is HW > ShB > EW > SB > ARR. HW was simply the whole package. I loved ShB, but there was too much filler (trolley, lift, etc.). EW is in the middle, I would have a higher opinion of it if Elpis had turned out differently. SB, I just did not care about Ala Mhigo and I did not like spending most of 4.0 pressuring people to go to war.

I love that Ishgard still factors heavily into the WoL's story. My big concern about the new direction is we'll lose old ties like that because we'll be hanging out in other continents/worlds all the time. I have to admit, I'm not fully on board with this traveler mantle they've saddled on the WoL. This is a complaint I've had in WoW for years. I wanted a reason to return home to EK/Kalimdor (besides the AH :P), not constantly be sent abroad.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I overall liked ARR, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers. HW and EW were a mixed bag to me.



ARR

[list]+ Eorzea is a varied setting with the 4 countries, several beast tribes, ruins of several ancient civilizations lying around, and then you have Garlean presence.[/list]
[list]+ Grounded story with the war with Garlemald and the city state stories (namely Ishgard dealing with insurgents, and Ul'dah's political intrigue)[/list]
[list]- Scions are overall unlikeable.[/list]
[list]- The above interesting storylines are constantly interrupted by the boring, repetitive, and formulaic primal plotline.[/list]



HW

[list]+/- cast is more likeable than the last but you still had a lot of dud characters.[/list]
[list]- I don't find the aesthetics and setting to be interesting. Generic gothic european knight imagery with snowy wastes and grey stone castles and dragons.[/list]
[list]- Villains were boring. Another evil pope and rawr dragon. The Warriors of Darkness were okay.[/list]
[list]- The 3.0 story has a meh first 1/3rd, an interesting journey up until the Vault happens, and a meh last 1/3rd. Only real thing of interest happening in the patches is the discontentment among the widowers and the orphans, and the WoD story. The rest was meh.[/list]
[list]- 3.2's ending narration hypes up the demise of at least two characters and then 3.3 doesn't deliver on either.[/list]



Stormblood

[list]+ Likeable cast of characters.[/list]
[list]+ Enjoyable villains.[/list]
[list]+ Nice aesthetics of the Pacific Island/East Asia and Turkey. Nothing particularly imaginative or fantasy about them but they are pleasant enough.[/list]
[list]+ Fun adventure story in 4.0. The patches had interesting stuff with Doma and really hyped up the war.[/list]
[list]- Any semblance of stakes disappears with bullocks survivals.[/list]



Shadowbringers

[list]+ Cast is overall likeable.[/list]
[list]+ Setting is a bit more fantasy than usual which is nice.[/list]
[list]+ Adventure story that is overall well paced and satisfying.[/list]
[list]+ Villains are decent.[/list]
[list]- The patches hyped up the demise of a character, only for said character to survive and continue haunting the story.[/list]
[list]- FFXIV starts becoming a little too Kingdom Hearts-y for my liking. Story starts becoming convoluted. Retcons start piling up. The story is no longer grounded. The tone is too soft and fluffy. Same tragic villain story rehashed half a dozen times in a row.[/list]
[list]- Interesting story threads start being discarded or neutered, like the Garlemald war arc, or Limsa's piracy, or Tempering, etc.[/list]
[list]- A certain character competes with Alphinaud for the same spot as the "young, bookish deuteragonist who is the best pal of the WoL" in the patches.[/list]



Endwalker

[list]+ for the 5th zone.[/list]
[list]+/- story is a mixed bag. First half of Labyrinthos is a snore. Thavanir was okay but turns out to be filler that doesn't amount to anything. Garlemald and the first 1/3rd of the moon were great. The last 2/3rds of the moon feel like filler. Return to Thavnair is okay but would have been more impactful had we been seeing Gridania or Ul'dah being burned. The 5th zone is great but is predicated upon more KH nonsense and further convolutes the story. The first half of the last zone is atmospheric, but then devolves into more KH nonsense, and the last zone and dungeon feels like a lesser rehash of ShB's last zone and dungeon.[/list]
[list]+/- Villains are a mixed bag. Fandaniel was fine. Zenos was wasted. The final villain (and the ending in general) is a lesser rehash of ShB. The final villain was not blessed with a charismatic voice actor like Emet's character was and doesn't really carry the final act when it mattered.[/list]
[list]+/- cast is a mixed bag. Urianger, Thancred, and Estinien are likeable. The rest of the Scions either aren't, or wasted by repeating the same empty platitudes over and over.[/list]
[list]- A tremendous amount of dialogue is spent repeating the empty platitudes over and over.[/list]
[list]- For all of the hype about the world ending apocalypse and sacrifices, nothing is actually lost. Feels like an anticlimax.[/list]
[list]- Too many cutscenes compared to actual gameplay. Feels less like a game and more like watching a long winded, heavily decompressed movie.[/list]
[list]- As the ending to the saga, it is... underwhelming. GW2's story is mediocre but War Eternal was a good sendoff.[/list]


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SB, I just did not care about Ala Mhigo and I did not like spending most of 4.0 pressuring people to go to war.

I found it funny how in ARR and HW, people who wanted to go to war with Garlemald, like Ilberd, were demonized as warmongers, and the protagonists went out of their way to try to avoid going to war. Then Stormblood happens and then all of the sudden, the protagonists are like "we have to go to war with Garlemald now!" and people who don't want to go to war are demonized as cowards and appeasers.

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I have to admit, I'm not fully on board with this traveler mantle they've saddled on the WoL. This is a complaint I've had in WoW for years. I wanted a reason to return home to EK/Kalimdor (besides the AH :P), not constantly be sent abroad.

With the way the writing of FFXIV has been recently, there isn't much story material left in the Three Great Continents. Gridania is sorta boring and the only thing the writers can seem to squeeze out of it is the same bad white mage story over and over. Piracy has been written out of Limsa. Ul'dah has the syndicate, but as of EW it seems that there isn't a conflict between them and the Sultana. The writers don't seem to be interested in exploring the aftermath of Ishgard's church losing power to a parliament. Nagxia and Dalmasca have not been fleshed out so we're probably not going to get conflict out of them. A Hingashi civil war could happen but that would be odd given how the samurai questline demonized revolutionaries (ironically in the same expansion where the MSQ romanticized revolutionaries). Garlemald and Bozja are being rebuilt offscreen. Pretty much all of the ancient civilizations have been explored in one way or another (Nyn, Amdapor, Mhaach, Allag, Sil'dah).

I didn't have a problem with going to Outland or Draenor or Argus or the Shadowlands. I just want it to be good.

[Dejiko]

Anyone else experiencing a bug with the Sage level 80 quest?
The game crashes about halfway through every time i attempt it.
Which also means i have to sit through an 8k queue everytime i want to try.

[Faldric]

I overall liked ARR, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers. HW and EW were a mixed bag to me.

First, thanks for keeping this low on spoilers. It doesn't spoil more than the trailers which is a reasonable amount IMHO. Although I would argue the trailer spoilered too much this time.

I just finished the moon, and so far my experience mirrors your own. The pacing feels way off. You spend 10 quests doing essentially nothing, and then stories built up since ARR are resolved within 1-2 quests with a bunch of hand-waving like Garlemald. Or after the big fight on the moon. If this was always a possibility, then I have sooo many questions.

And the worst part: The story is predictable. Which makes a lot of the plot feel like filler. Because you could go on to the next exciting thing already, but you have to do 5 more quests of running around talking to people for hints that are superfluous at that time.
I don't have much hope for the remainder of the story. Feels like the little mystery left after SHB is done after the moon and now its a rush against some new big bad evil that has been pulling the strings all along. I hope I am wrong, but the way the story currently goes thats exactly what will happen.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I still enjoy playing the game. I was just really into the main story, but I don't feel it this time. It feels rushed. It feels illogical.
Maybe I will start a new character after the MSQ is done and replay it to get a better grip how many retcons they introduced at this point.

TLDR: Currently EW MSQ is my GoT Season 8.

[dope_danny]

The writers don't seem to be interested in exploring the aftermath of Ishgard's church losing power to a parliament.

You might want to do the caster role quests.

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First, thanks for keeping this low on spoilers. It doesn't spoil more than the trailers which is a reasonable amount IMHO. Although I would argue the trailer spoilered too much this time.

I just finished the moon, and so far my experience mirrors your own. The pacing feels way off. You spend 10 quests doing essentially nothing, and then stories built up since ARR are resolved within 1-2 quests with a bunch of hand-waving like Garlemald. Or after the big fight on the moon. If this was always a possibility, then I have sooo many questions.

And the worst part: The story is predictable. Which makes a lot of the plot feel like filler. Because you could go on to the next exciting thing already, but you have to do 5 more quests of running around talking to people for hints that are superfluous at that time.
I don't have much hope for the remainder of the story. Feels like the little mystery left after SHB is done after the moon and now its a rush against some new big bad evil that has been pulling the strings all along. I hope I am wrong, but the way the story currently goes thats exactly what will happen.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I still enjoy playing the game. I was just really into the main story, but I don't feel it this time. It feels rushed. It feels illogical.
Maybe I will start a new character after the MSQ is done and replay it to get a better grip how many retcons they introduced at this point.

TLDR: Currently EW MSQ is my GoT Season 8.

The way i described it to a friend is the high moments in endwalkers .0 story content are very high, but the downtime between them is a lot longer, probably on account of them trying to wrap up so much. The next zone for example is cool and has some of the best moments in the expansion but it also has some real 'go click on the desinination' stuff to validate an entire mmo zone for what feels like it could have been a pair of dungeons and some cutscenes.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The way i described it to a friend is the high moments in endwalkers .0 story content are very high, but the downtime between them is a lot longer, probably on account of them trying to wrap up so much. The next zone for example is cool and has some of the best moments in the expansion but it also has some real 'go click on the desinination' stuff to validate an entire mmo zone for what feels like it could have been a pair of dungeons and some cutscenes.

I would have been so pissed if zone 5 was just a bunch of dungeons.

[Poppincaps]

My Ranking is basically in reverse chronological order: EW > ShB > SB >= HW > ARR

I personally worry a little bit for the future of the story. I hope the writers don't feel that they need to keep creating greater and more dangerous threats like WoW did. I've already seen some people say the opposite, that they wonder how they're going to make a threat even bigger than what we faced in Endwalker. I'd prefer if the story was a little more low key with us going to a new land and dealing with the strife they're going through there. They can also start building up the next 3 or 4 expansion arc to journey through for the next 10 years.

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You might want to do the caster role quests.

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The way i described it to a friend is the high moments in endwalkers .0 story content are very high, but the downtime between them is a lot longer, probably on account of them trying to wrap up so much. The next zone for example is cool and has some of the best moments in the expansion but it also has some real 'go click on the desinination' stuff to validate an entire mmo zone for what feels like it could have been a pair of dungeons and some cutscenes.

Not even the caster role quests, they also explored it in the Scholasticate questline in Heavensward. I actually had the same complaint about Ishgard until I did that questline.

[Leyre]

My ranking is HW > ShB > EW > SB > ARR. HW was simply the whole package. I loved ShB, but there was too much filler (trolley, lift, etc.). EW is in the middle, I would have a higher opinion of it if Elpis had turned out differently. SB, I just did not care about Ala Mhigo and I did not like spending most of 4.0 pressuring people to go to war.

I love that Ishgard still factors heavily into the WoL's story. My big concern about the new direction is we'll lose old ties like that because we'll be hanging out in other continents/worlds all the time. I have to admit, I'm not fully on board with this traveler mantle they've saddled on the WoL. This is a complaint I've had in WoW for years. I wanted a reason to return home to EK/Kalimdor (besides the AH :P), not constantly be sent abroad.

Based rank

Gotta say, not digging the bunnys and im kinda getting pissed that we literally got told that our whole world its fucked up and the scions dont seem to give a damn like they dont really seem to understand the gravity of the situation

[Cosmic Janitor]

My ranking would probably be ShB > HW >= EW > SB >= ARR (depending on how I'd weight .0 and subsequent partches). EW might pull ahead of HW if the patches rock.

My Ranking is basically in reverse chronological order: EW > ShB > SB >= HW > ARR

I personally worry a little bit for the future of the story. I hope the writers don't feel that they need to keep creating greater and more dangerous threats like WoW did.

I think for the immediate future we have the teased enemy after the credits, though it may also just be some of the raid stuff. For the future I don't think they can go any bigger right now, unless we go meet the even-earlier-progenitors or some shit like that. I'd like to think Yoshi-P isn't as retarded as Danuser & Co. though. I hope we explore some of the shards, ancient places in the first and the "new world". That stuff was mentioned enough as possible hints imho.

[Vakir]

ShB > EW > HW > SB > ARR

ShB felt more tight and nothing felt quite as powerful as Amarout since, because it completely recontextualized everything. ShB changed things so much that EW felt more like a sequel to that than a sequel to the last 10 years. EW had extremely high highs but probably needed to trim about 10% of the slower points that weren't Elpis, which was paced perfectly for me (and, again, I recognize there was value in those slow points as a whole).

Heavensward and Stormblood in retrospect feel far more self-contained as stories even if there were elements in the post-game content that led into the larger mythos we just wrapped up. Stormblood suffers from just how rushed both fronts of the conflict are, but especially Gyr Abania. ARR is an odd duck because they were desperately trying to cobble together something from a disaster and the 2.1-2.55 content is, even post-edits, just not very good with the exception of the Crystal Tower and the big betrayal.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Gotta say, not digging the bunnys and im kinda getting pissed that we literally got told that our whole world its fucked up and the scions dont seem to give a damn like they dont really seem to understand the gravity of the situation

I think the only thing that annoyed me about that situation was that no one verablized the simple reality that fleeing was absolutely pointless, since Meteion would have just kept spamming the universe and fucked us on any other planet as well. The whole exodus plan was a still birth from conception. The fact that no one mentioned fighting for the planet as an alternative was mostly to build suspension with the player imho..

[Thestrawman]

IThe writers don't seem to be interested in exploring the aftermath of Ishgard's church losing power to a parliament.

Not going to get into all the other points but this one is just wrong. There are two different quest lines going over what happened to the church. One from HW and the magic dps role quest in EW.