[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[MsSideEye]

I would generally not listen to Val's opinions on FF14. They seem to have this weird hatred for the game that is certainly not representative of the community as a whole. Endwalker is just as good if not better than Shadowbringers. I personally like it a bit more. The expansion is also not any more "barren" than any other expansion at launch. If you buy it you're getting plenty of content for the money.

For my personal 2 cents I would list FF14 as the best story I've played in a game and Endwalker is what solidified that for me. There are a few tailing missions that they put throughout the first half of the MSQ that are pretty annoying but otherwise it's a great expansion.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who understands and acknowledges Val's seemingly vitriol hatred for the game. As for the 'Barren' thought on it, well.. the only area I'd call barren at all in the expansion is the Moon... which is well... the MOON. Not surprising that there aren't that many quests or activities to do up there.

As for the story itself, I feel like Endwalker is about up there with Shadowbringers, but in a different respect. Shadowbringers was very much a story that could be taken on it's own and away from the rest of 14 and still be considered awesome. The Lore stuff considering the Exarch, the Sundered worlds, and everything else deepen the understand and enjoyment of what came before, but isn't necessary to understand what's a play there.

By comparison, Endwalker is very much MEANT to be taken with the rest of the game in context. This is supposed to be an adventure to cap off all the adventures you've had just far, where the characters you've traveled with, grown with, and fought along side bring to a close what started back in ARR all those years ago. If you hadn't enjoyed the story up to this point, or didn't care about the Scions or the world you've been playing in, then yeah, Endwalker kinda falls flat since it's not meant to be taken as a solo story. But as the end to ten years of laughing, crying, and the scions coming together as a family?

It's near perfect.

[Granyala]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who understands and acknowledges Val's seemingly vitriol hated for the game.

Definitely not. I thought Endwalker's story was well done.

[AntenoraDK]

Is that so? I'm not into this whole housing thing, but my friends basically said the sweet spot are "medium" houses due to limited amount of stuff you can place inside your house and apparently, the bigger house has a higher limit but the ratio is skewed and they look "empty" in comparison.
Or could they be talking about something else... like Apartments or something?

Medium is the sweet spot but you can absolutely make a cosy home on a Small's 200 item limit, I've got a nice cosy little cottage in Empyreum myself.


I think the reason the limits are as low as they are is due to the game still supporting Playstation 4.

I hope once they finally drop support for the PS4 that they increase the limits ever so slightly.

[KrayZ33]

Medium is the sweet spot but you can absolutely make a cosy home on a Small's 200 item limit, I've got a nice cosy little cottage in Empyreum myself.


I think the reason the limits are as low as they are is due to the game still supporting Playstation 4.

I hope once they finally drop support for the PS4 that they increase the limits ever so slightly.

I think so too, but just like in Genshin for example it seems like a Large plot doesn't have a big enough item-limit to make it feel "full".
At least thats how I understood it when my friends were talking about it.

[AntenoraDK]

I think so too, but just like in Genshin for example it seems like a Large plot doesn't have a big enough item-limit to make it feel "full".
At least thats how I understood it when my friends were talking about it.

I feel like Large plots are intended for FC's or people running community event locations like clubs.


Personally I'd like to see the item limits increase to the following


Apartment: 100 => 125

Cottage: 200 => 250

House: 300 => 375

Mansion: 400 => 500

[Soikona]

I don't miss addons from WoW either. There are only a few small adjustments I would make to the UI, like making DoT timer bars that I can position freely.
Since I retired from raiding, most of the time I don't run ACT anymore.

Most certainly I don't miss the chaos on patch days.
It is fun to be able to just log in and play and not worry about whether my core addons are functional yet or whether it's development has been halted, needing to find a replacement.

Wasn’t what I meant, I meant I could still do the same game content at the same or similar level. The advantage isn’t as big as one would expect.

[Katchii]

I think so too, but just like in Genshin for example it seems like a Large plot doesn't have a big enough item-limit to make it feel "full".
At least thats how I understood it when my friends were talking about it.

Depends on what items you're using. My FC house feels almost too full sometimes, but we have some extreme decorating enthusiasts in our FC who spend lots of time and money decorating, redecorating and making it feel amazing.

1 item, means exactly that. It doesn't take into account the size of the item. So if you want tables full of tiny items remember that each one of those little ornaments eats into your item count total.

[Novaice]

Personally , I would like to see Upgradable Plots.

Rebuild all residential wards where all the plots are all large in size, but have sections blocked off.

you start by buying a small plot, build a small house.

decide to expand - upgrade the plot to medium or straight to large if you have the gil. section(s) of land is unblocked on plot. build new house. (repeat if needed)

no need to move or fight for a bigger plot of land.

[Soikona]

Besides the cosmetic appeal of housing, is there anything power related to housing?

[Onikaroshi]

Definitely not. I thought Endwalker's story was well done.

Yup, even though I'm rather vocal that I don't think it was nearly as good as ShB, it was still good.

Besides the cosmetic appeal of housing, is there anything power related to housing?

Well, depends on what you consider power, if gil is power you can make a lot of gil farming, but not really, it's mostly cosmetic.

[Graeham]

Maybe people being told to keep their opinion to themselves is how the "majority opinion" keeps getting reinforced.

I mean, seriously, if someone asks for peoples opinions you wouldn't give yours if you felt it wasn't popular enough? What the hell is that?

Yep. Sadly there's always been a weirdly high amount of gatekeeping within the FFXIV community. Right down to bizarre attempts to police which characters people are 'supposed' to like or dislike.

I mean, let's not pretend that the high critic scores of Endwalker didn't have anything to do with FFXIV's surge of popularity in the past year.

Also, I will die on this hill: Stormblood was fucking great. So I can understand why people might want a full breadth of opinions on these expansions.

Stormblood suffered somewhat from being a split expansion though it was pretty solid overall. I liked it. Admittedly I liked it more due to the Far Eastern segments but it also gave us Eureka, a fun trial series and the Return to Ivalice raids. Heaven on High as well.

I guess we'll see if the patch content in Endwalker is solid or not. I do wish more of the 'meaningful' content came earlier rather than later. Relic weapons, for example.

[eschatological]

Besides the cosmetic appeal of housing, is there anything power related to housing?

I'd say the only "power" associated with it might be gardening. To get your chocobo to level 20, you need Thavnarian onions. If you don't want to buy them, you have to grow them via gardening. But that's pretty inconsequential power, and onions are usually in the 50k range so it's not that bad.

One thing about FFXIV that grinds my gears is having to go completely out of game to even know there's new patch content out. Like, I'm never in Old Sharlayan or Radz-at-Hahn, so how would I know there's a new tribal faction dailies, or new custom deliveries, or a new Hildebrand side quest? I have so many side quests unfinished that new ones popping up make no impression on me.

[Ghost of Cow]

Stormblood suffered somewhat from being a split expansion though it was pretty solid overall. I liked it. Admittedly I liked it more due to the Far Eastern segments but it also gave us Eureka, a fun trial series and the Return to Ivalice raids. Heaven on High as well.

Actually, I hadn't thought of it, but yeah...the patch content was definitely great in Stormblood. Better than the actual X.0 MSQ in my opinion at least. Usually when I talk about an "expansion" I'm just referring to the X.0 portion and I kinda forget the patch content.

Well, except Eureka. Screw that place.

[Lane]

Just going to point out there's a 500+ page thread on the official forums about everything wrong with Endwalker. Personally, I did not enjoy it nor did I think it tied into ShB well despite being back-to-back expansions by the same MSQ writer. I think it was partly a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' issue due to it being the finale.

If you're able to enjoy something on a surface level with substantial suspension of disbelief then EW is probably entertaining. If you're a lore deep diver with attention to detail you're probably going to be saying "WTF?" a lot.

[Katchii]

Just going to point out there's a 500+ page thread on the official forums about everything wrong with Endwalker. Personally, I did not enjoy it nor did I think it tied into ShB well despite being back-to-back expansions by the same MSQ writer. I think it was partly a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' issue due to it being the finale.

If you're able to enjoy something on a surface level with substantial suspension of disbelief then EW is probably entertaining. If you're a lore deep diver with attention to detail you're probably going to be saying "WTF?" a lot.

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.

[Lane]

I don't go to the official forums, it's a gatekeeping cesspool of an echo chamber in my experience.

It's just the opposite side of the spectrum as r/ffxiv.

I'm not even going to attempt to summarize all of the criticism, but the story not lining up with a subjective vision isn't even something I routinely see discussed. It's largely inconsistencies, contradictions, logical leaps, hypocrisy, etc.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Maybe people being told to keep their opinion to themselves is how the "majority opinion" keeps getting reinforced.

I mean, seriously, if someone asks for peoples opinions you wouldn't give yours if you felt it wasn't popular enough? What the hell is that?

When someone is asking whether they should play something or not, and it's an incredibly and almost universally loved game, coming along and saying "You can play it but it sucks royally, barely has any content, has an awful story" etc. is just a hilariously bad look.

People are free to express their opinions whenever and wherever they like. It's just a cringe look when someone tries to turn someone away from a hugely beloved game because they have some kind of vendetta with how the story was handled.

[Ghost of Cow]

When someone is asking whether they should play something or not, and it's an incredibly and almost universally loved game, coming along and saying "You can play it but it sucks royally, barely has any content, has an awful story" etc. is just a hilariously bad look.

People are free to express their opinions whenever and wherever they like. It's just a cringe look when someone tries to turn someone away from a hugely beloved game because they have some kind of vendetta with how the story was handled.

That's silly, though. You're literally just saying the same thing, that if your opinion isn't popular enough that you shouldn't voice it.

People can have different opinions. It really is ok. The game itself is fine, I don't think it's so fragile that it's going to fold tomorrow if someone says publicly that they didn't like the latest expansion.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Yep. Sadly there's always been a weirdly high amount of gatekeeping within the FFXIV community. Right down to bizarre attempts to police which characters people are 'supposed' to like or dislike.

Bro you must prowl some super niche parts of the fandom community because I haven't seen any of this shit. I realize these kind of extreme fans exist in all popular game communities and wish more realized it as well. I just find it strange when people feel the need to point it out as some kind of indictment of the entire community when they've found one or two particularly rabid fans.

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That's silly, though. You're literally just saying the same thing, that if your opinion isn't popular enough that you shouldn't voice it.

People can have different opinions. It really is ok. The game itself is fine, I don't think it's so fragile that it's going to fold tomorrow if someone says publicly that they didn't like the latest expansion.

Yeah sure, but none of this actually addresses the fact that when someone asks if they should play something, someone jumping up and screaming in their face that it's terrible, is still a really bad look.

99% of the time it's not a really honest take, and often comes with the underlying motivation to dissuade as many people as possible from playing, ESPECIALLY when they spout all of this vitriol and yet sit around in its community and forums trash talking it months and even years after it comes out.

No, it's not going to hurt the company at all. And while I understand that person's vitriol, the very fact that they hang around and have a hard time making posts about the game without talking about how awful it is, is truly a sign of some really weird motivations.

[Graeham]

They exist in every fandom, yes, though there's arguably a lot more of their ilk when it comes to a game with a personality cult surrounding the lead developer. As for where it happens, it's often found on Twitter, Reddit and the official forums as well as sites such as Gamefaqs. Express the 'wrong' like or dislike where fictional characters are concerned and there's a good chance of some sort of meltdown or weird vendetta being formed.

By all means take it with a pinch of salt, though I've been posting across multiple sites and playing since the days of ARR's launch so I've had ample time to encounter such things on both a direct and indirect basis.