There are three of us here who play this, so I reckon it's as deserving of a topic as Sea of Thieves at least.
I went back to Final Fantasy XIV yesterday, for the first time in about three years. (They've got an event on at the moment for lapsed players, where you get 4 days free to reacquaint yourself with the game). I'd played for hundreds of hours previously but honestly I don't think I've ever been so confused in a game before. I couldn't remember who I was, where I was, what I was supposed to be doing or why. All the skills on my toolbar had moved around and some of them had been invalidated. Everything I selected from the menu popped up tips telling what had changed since last time I was here. My muscle memory was simply a distant memory.
I nearly turned it off after 15 minutes. But for some reason I persevered, and it slowly all began to make sense again. I spent about 45 minutes in the menus simply reading descriptions of all the skills and it began to come back to me. The same amount of time in the Inn reading a summary of the plot so far and watching old cutscenes. I fought some easy battles, then some harder battles, and did some simple story quests. I've got an actual rotation again.
And you know what? It's still one of the best games ever. It looks remarkably good still (and has great PS4 Pro support now, which is a nice bonus). The storyline is pretty great for an MMO, and the Heavensward story is pretty great by the standards of any game. It's ridiculously big, stuffed full of things to do and can be played pretty much entirely solo if that's your thing. It's had loads of really nice quality of life improvements in the three years since I was last here. I don't really know why I stopped playing it, and I might be here for some time.
Anyway: Gar Woofoo, level 55 Monk, Moogle server. I think we can even play together cross-server now, is that right?
We can do instances together, yeah, but nothing else.
The dungeons have been uniformly excellent so far – I'm level 39, so I've unlocked seven or eight of them – and I like that it forces you to play a lot of them for the story. But I've even found myself queueing to enter the optional ones, something I would never have done with randoms in WoW.
But everyone in FF14 seems lovely. I mention at the start of every dungeon that it's my first time, and to tell me if I miss important stuff, and everyone is very accommodating. Probably helps that they're not frustratingly difficult; I haven't wiped once yet.
So - Alastor - any tips on what old content I should be doing? Obviously pressing forward with the Heavensward and Stormblood stories is the priority but along the way I'd like to mop up any particularly good bits of old 50/60 content I may have missed.
So for instance I'm doing the original Relic Weapon quest - yes the weapons will be out of date as soon as I get them but the quests are fun and there's some new content in there (chimera/hydra fights) and it's a nice change of pace from the main story. I've also been progressing with the Hildibrand quests which are stupid as anything but hey ho.
I don't suppose there's much chance of ever seeing Crystal Tower/Coils of Bahamut but maybe one day.
I see no reason why you cant do Crystal Tower, they're all part of the new Raid roulette so people still do them, just unlock Labyrinth of the Ancients and cue up, they weren't too hard and should be easier now so that shouldn't be an issue, I'd love to tun through them with you, ditto for the HW ones when you hit 60, Ozma is in oneand hes the best boss ever,
Binding Coil if Bahamut is a bit trickier, if all you want is story we can do it unsynced, if not I can try an organise a level sync party? Thankfully in HW all raids have a normal mode now,
Ill post more stuff later since Im supposed to be working now, ahem.
That all sounds great - no hurry on the raid content but nice to know there's still the opportunity to experience it.
Had a fairly productive day, did the three Hard mode primals for the relic weapon quest and advanced the main story up to the Aery so there's a nice new dungeon waiting for me when I next get the time to play. I'm definitely renewing my sub, I'm having a great time.
One bum note though: I bought a (new, sealed) copy of Stormblood off Amazon as it was half the price it was anywhere else, and when I went to register it on PSN, it said the code had already been used. Reading around, there seems to have been some problems in this area so I've submitted a support ticket to SE and I'm waiting to hear back (Monday at the earliest I assume). Not great, though I'm miles off the content yet so no real hurry.
Impressed by Square Enix: received a replacement code by email this morning and it's all working great now.
On another note, bloody hell there are a lot of dungeons in this game now! Didn't Heavensward only ship with 4? It's gained a few since I was last here…
Can't remember if this was mentioned in the old thread, but has anyone watched the noclip documentary on YouTube? It's really interesting stuff – the staff they interview (right up to the CEO) are surprisingly candid about what went wrong with version 1.0.
And it's fascinating to see that initial version. It's instantly recognisable and yet completely naff-looking.
It was more… misplaced. You’d have a flowerpot with a million polygons because the flowerpot team were really on top of their game. Then a whole forest made up of the same texture cut and pasted for miles on end.
I played a bit of FFXIV 1.0 in beta (which was essentially the same as launch) and it was awful. Those videos are superb, you should watch them if you have the slightest interest in the history of this game
I want to run any content with you guys, so I'm well up for that. also I can't fucking believe MPH isn't a Lalafell, but okay.
Also, Gar have you done The Vault dungeon yet? It's easily one of the best dungeons in the game, storywise, design wise (helps to like Dark Souls 1 in this respect), fights wise (KNIGHTS) and a last boss that used to make healers shit their pants.
Awesome, I love everything about that dungeon, last boss 'SICKNESS SHALL BE PURGED' included, Spoiler - click to showit made me really looking forward to fighting that cunt with the spear later on too. Now I think you get to enjoy the Gubal Library next, which is another one I enjoy and then it's possibly the coolest FF reference in the game, I've probably overhyped it but I still think you'll enjoy it.
Gotta say the player base seems to have mellowed a bit since the last time I played. Everyone's been really nice, and the way in which the game gets people not only playing old content, but (through bonuses) being actively delighted to have a new player on board, is genius. I'm really enjoying the dungeon runs, more so because as a Monk all I have to do is hit stuff and dodge stuff.
How are the new jobs by the way? Both SAM and RDM sound pretty fun.
I haven't picked either up, but people seem to love them on their own terms, Sam is the highest single target DPS for melee atm, it has an attack called Midare Setsugekka that can get some of the biggest numbers in the game, I guess if it was characterized it would be in fluidity (has a gap closer it can use pretty often) and ease of use (not a lot of positionals like MNK, a class it shares gear with hint hint :p)
And Red Mage is the raid progression caster of choice, it has Black and White magic, and it has to balance using both. Here's the main 'gimmick' with RDM, it gets to instantly cast any spell after slowcasting one, so you'd do something like Ver-Stone then instantly cast (and thus can move while casting) Ver-Holy, it has a skill called Ver-Raise that it can use the instacast mechanic to use to raisesomeone instantly every other spell so it's a little bit ridiculous. Also, once you use enough magic you get to use the Rapier and do amillion stabs in a second, then cut a flaming Z in the air like Zorr before doing a fabulous backflip.
So that's Heavensward done! Great ending, liked the final zone, glad they didn't have any of the cutscene-heavy dungeons that finished off A Realm Reborn.
So what should I be prioritising now I'm level 60? Obviously the main story quest continues from here, but in the meantime I'm guessing I should be looking to unlock the rest of the Heavensward dungeons and trials (actually I think I've still got a few level 50 ones to get from Mor Dhona too). I've seen some references to Diadem and Palace of the Dead, are they worth looking into? I'm guessing I don't need to grind for items at this stage as I've managed to buy a complete ilvl 255 set from Foundation which was massively higher than what I was wearing before. I've picked up Wondrous Tails from Idyllshire. Ummm… Hildibrand I guess? Is there a Relic weapon equivalent to do?
You can do every (3) raids,you saw what happened in the waters outside Idyllshire? You can do the 3 24 man raids (may need to be done in order), you could have done POTD a while back but Diadem is kinda' not worth doing now.
Not to put a spanner in the works but you only beat patch 3.0 of Heavensward right? Or did you really beat all patches? :o. (Did you like Knights of the Round?)
There's Hard Mode dungeons, Savage Primals, I dunno if you can fight all 3 Final Fantasy 6 primals yet.
Nope, only beat 3.0 so far. I’m in no tearing hurry, I remember the section between ARR and Heavensward took me an entire month (but was awesome). I’ll get to Stormblood in my own time, just fancy a change of pace and some side content for a little while now.
In that case, without checking for accuracy you can at least start Alexander Gordias and Void Ark fresh off the 60 cap and then progress, but the respective set of raids require more gear of course, nothing life absorbing though.
Palace of the Dead eventually nets you a weapon that should be okay for most content at that point in time but I think you can get a stronger weapon grinding tomestones now.
As for the relic, that used to be a massive grind and its been fairly nerfed now, tbh it wasn't as fun to get as ARR's relic but if you unlock the quest hopefully most of your 3.0 adventures will contribute towards it without you having to think about it
I honestly can't think of a more exciting cross over thn this, it has SO much potential. Iconic Rathalos armor in XIV, the Rathalos weapons for the XIV classes (most are repreented in one form or other). And on MHW side, the relics could be craftable, we get a suit of a FFXIV character, who knows? Honestly, fighting Rathalos in the Azm Steppe is enough to keep me going for now!
There’s a new expansion announced for this and Alastor hasn’t spunked all over this thread yet - is he ill?
BLUE MAGE
At some point I’m going to have to resub for a month and blast through Stormblood. Even a single player experience this beats most other RPGs hands down.
I wanna' post I've just been busy lol. Blue Mage, and we already got our blatant Viera race T-shirt hint (He teases new features through t-shirts, the Fanfest I went to where he revealed Dark Knight he wore a Batman one) can't wait to see what he reveals at the EU one (which I'm going to, France yay!), hopefully Dancer and/or Gunblade (as a Tank I hope!).
Did you see the trailer, Gar? It's probably a spoiler but it's so nice, they do amazing expansion reveals for sure.
Our Warrior of Light is looking rough as shit nowadays. As you can see (if you chose to watch it_, someone wears a Gunblade on their back.
Actually I guess it makes sense. As they add more skills for each expansion I guess they need to go back and streamline things a bit. And a lot of Monk skills were basically the same anyway, just different ways to get Greased Lightning up (and, later, Meditation).
So I spent some time rejigging my action bars, I've completely lost my flow but I'm sure it'll all come back to me. Anything else I should know that's changed in the last year or so? Can I get Blue Mage without having Shadowbringers?
Pretty sure you just need to head to Limsa to unlock it. It's not what you might think though. It's capped at Level 50 and can't be used in Duty Finder roulettes. You can do Level 50 content (well you have to, to learn all the spells)in preformed parties, also some spells are learned on the map. I haven't done it but it has it's own weird colliseum thing too.
Also when did they change the updates process?! It used to be that a small patch would get downloaded in the launcher and applied in seconds. Now it all goes through the standard PS4 update process which means it downloads the patch then spends an hour doing its “copying files” thing. Terrible decision.
A while back, it's annoying because you need to reserve a lot of space now or you won't be able to play. This was so bad with ESO I don't think I can ever redownload if I want to also play other games at the same time now.
Oh and another question. The queues on Moogle at the moment are nuts. Would I potentially be able to work around this by using the World Visit system to visit the new server Spriggan for a bit? I’m assuming the population would be lower and I’m just working through story stuff at the moment, all the dungeons are cross-server anyway aren’t they?
I have no idea if that would work since as you say, dungeons are cross server but you don't lose anything for trying. I'd try thatsystem myself but all my friends are on a separate data centre. Had World Visit been here in Stormblood, I'd have been able to see them, I'd have been able to see you to. >_<
So yeah, the post-Heavensward storyline is pretty great. Gameplay-wise it's a bit "talk to this person, teleport here, talk to this other person", but much like the post-ARR patches, it's a chance for the plot to really shine. A nice way to reintegrate myself into the game without too much pressure, and I did my first dungeon (The Antitower) last night and it all went pretty swimmingly so that's good.
I've forgotten how much stuff there is in this game that I simply know nothing about though. I have very little clue what to do with Retainers, Squadrons, Deep Dungeons, Blue Mages, Sightseeing or a whole bunch of other things. I'm just plugging on with the story for now and I'll come back and check out the other stuff later.
These are just NPCs you can hire to hold items for you, and also, they can be given a job (as in Monk, Dragoon or even crafting) and gear (My retainers were better geared than some actual players lol) and sent on Ventures (you need tokens for this but you probably have stacks of these) they return from in real world hours with an item (usually terrible, until they level up which they do from doing these).
TL;DR - you can get them to hold your gear and farm materials for you (if they're a Miner or or whatever)
Squadrons
You get a barracks near your Grand Company (the 1 of 3 Alliances in the game) and you can recruit AI adventurers to send on missions and eventually do dungeons with, I guess it's a precursor to the Trust system, but I didn't use them.
Deep Dungeon
Random generated dungeon where you level from 1 to 60 much much faster than outside of it, there's deadly traps, party wipes, ambushes and fun stuff like turning into monsters. It's okay and actually gives you EXP after you leave. It's really fun in Stormblood.
Blue Mages
I covered this earlier but I can do it properly if you want. :D
Sightseeing
It's just another EXP log that makes you find Vistas to yuse the /lookout emote on for exp…also I guess they look nice. In ARR's setion of the log, it's vague clues, but after that they at least tell you where to stand.
Hope that helps! And enjoy the actual Dragonsong War! It's pretty good!
Shadowbringers brought with it, two new classes. One was the FF8 style Gunblade Tank class 'Gunbreaker'. They emulated the Trigger mechanic from FF8 in which you'd press R1 before Squall connected* to explode the barrel by I believe making ammo spent as an Off Global Cooldown in between Global Cooldowns. I don't have this class even unlocked yet but if people want to know more I can go in more detail tomorrow.
I'm here today to talk about the other class, Dancer. The ranged party support, Chakram throwing DPS.
Guys…this is the most fun I've had playing a XIV class since picking up Bard in Stormblood as a main. They don't have a set rotation, they work on a proc based system and thus are extremely RNG. They have a single target and aoe route and then those routes can unlock 'Feathers' for you to do a separate combo called 'Fan Dancing'. It all means you inconsistant but never stuck in a samey rotation all the time.
Their main mechanic is surprise surprise, Dancing. They can choose just 1 (one) party memeber as a Dance Partner who will get all the buffs a Dancer casts with skills and Dancing. They have two Dances, a two step and four step. Activating either turns your attacks until you finish into steps and you need to do them in a certain order to correctly activate a buff and either a 1000 potency or 1500 potency attack.
Just to give Wev and maybe Gar a shock, the 1500 potency attack can hit for 110,000 for me without party buffs. :)
This also buffs you and your assigned Dance Partner an attack boost, to further the Dance Partner mechanic, you and partner build up another gauge for Dancer called 'Espirit'. When it hits 50 you can do an aoe attack called 'Saber Dance'. And when there's downtime in a fight, like before a Boss ultimate you can do 'Improvisation' where you you start dancing then ight away and them orep eople around you the more your gauge fills.
So, it can buff someone in your team and everyone will literally beg to be your Dance Partner, it's got no cast time and can attack from everywhere because you throw Chakrams. It has no real combos to break and every so often you literally get to dance from point A to point B and kill things doing so. What's not to love.
It sounds tempting, if only because a dancing Roegadyn sounds hilarious.
I think I’m sticking with Monk for the foreseeable, though. It’s fun, I run in and hit things, it’s engaging enough in its mechanics to not be boring but not so complex that I get distracted from all the stuff happening around me. Plus I am super invested in the story right now (final patch prior to Stormblood) so I’ll save levelling an alt class for later when I need a change of pace.
I loved loved loved the whole Warriors of Darkness arc. So well set up, with every twist landing perfectly and an amazing resolution. The storytelling in this game, at least since the end of ARR, is simply outstanding.
Oh man, I won't go into why, but I'm super glad you liked the WoD. I know you still have Stormblood to go, and I don't want to completely sidestep it but Shadowbringers will blow you away honestly. Though if I wanted to mention Stormblood it had one of my favourite plot developments in the entire game so you do have stuff to look forward to there.
I'm playing on PS4 and I'm on one of the final quests before Stormblood. There's a solo duty that halfway through puts you in some sort of magitek cannon to fight off a load of enemies.
The moves for this cannon appear on a new hotbar in the middle of the screen. I can't find any way to actually activate these controls using the controller. The only way I can do it is by using the touchpad to move the mouse pointer and click them that way, which is obviously impossible at the same time as trying to move and target with the controller and I'm just dying repeatedly.
How do I get it to add these new abilities to my actual cross bar? I've tried disabling the Mount Hotbar and playing around with the settings for the Pet Hotbar but nothing seems to actually shift these things from their new bar, and I can't find anyway to activate them with buttons. I'm completely stuck.
Hmmm, I don't remember this quest but if its anything like the other Magitek parts pressing a button will put a mark on the screen and the X button should confirm the shot.
I had a look and this is 'Fly Free, My Pretty'? In that case it sounds like two attacks are aimed circle aoes which wont work if the touchpad pointer is off screen, once its aimed in the centre once you should only need to ready it by holding R2 and pressing the appropriate button to bring the aoe marker up and X to confirm it.
Doesn't it have two machinegun attacks, Photon Stream?
That’s the right quest but surely there’s a way to get those four new icons onto my cross bar when I’m driving the Magitek thingy? Having them free floating in the middle of the screen makes them almost unusable.
Wait, it's not replaced your old crossbar, as in, the old crossbar is there under the magitek one? You shouldn't need your old crossbar while using it since you will only use Magitek skills as if it were your own rotation.
Right, got it. Changed a hundred different options and something worked. Maybe disabling the Pet Hotbar entirely did the trick but it’s forced those skills onto my crossbar now.
Sorry I wasn't much help, but time to finish of Heavensward! When we did this quest as it came out were were all super looking close at the Samurai's attacks lol. (And yet I still haven't even unlocked the quest!)
