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Doesn't the Tactics remake have Balthier (FFXII) and Luso (Tactics A2) as well?
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Jul 6, 2022 18:27
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:Doesn't the Tactics remake have Balthier (FFXII) and Luso (Tactics A2) as well? Yup! Luso gets access to Ramza’s final Squire abilities a chapter early, and Balthier is a Machinist and Thief, But Better in one job
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Jul 6, 2022 18:36
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Schwartzcough posted:If you're not already harvesting souls for precious precious abilities, what are you even doing. It's faster to let an enemy crystalize than it is to farm the JP to actually buy skills. The vast majority of enemies only have abilities from Squire/Chemist/Knight/Archer/Priest/Wizard, and not many at that. Additionally, because of how enemy units are assigned abilities, you're overwhelmingly likely to just see the same first few action abilities from a job. More importantly, getting abilities from crystals does nothing towards unlocking new jobs, since that's based on earned JP and not abilities obtained. Let's not give bad advice now.
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Jul 6, 2022 19:32
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 for Dark Knight specifically you have to learn every ability on Wizard and Knight, not just get their job level up
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Jul 6, 2022 20:08
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Yeah, that’s what I meant: you have to get every single ability for both BM and Knight, while you “only” need to be level 8 (so… about 80-90% of the way to filling them out) for all of the others.
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Jul 6, 2022 20:53
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Rosalie_A posted:The vast majority of enemies only have abilities from Squire/Chemist/Knight/Archer/Priest/Wizard, and not many at that. Additionally, because of how enemy units are assigned abilities, you're overwhelmingly likely to just see the same first few action abilities from a job. Eh, in the storyline you start seeing higher-tier job enemies, and they have to have the minimum JP in all the pre-req jobs to have the higher jobs unlocked, so if you're familiar with the job tree you know what jobs they'll have some abilities in. And while it's true those are often low-JP abilities, I usually skip those and save for better abilities anyway. So I usually let a lot of the enemy team crystalize in story missions, and almost always get 1-3 abilities per crystal if I have the right character grab them.
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Jul 6, 2022 21:39
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Chapter 7: Inside You, There Are Two Wolves Axemaster Wyrn has a request before Kheris can get away from him. An old friend running security for Costa Del Sol has asked the Marauder’s Guild for help with a turtle infestation. The creatures have grown so numerous and belligerent that the beaches are no longer safe. Kheris knows that Costa Del Sol’s security is primarily composed of the former Company of Heroes, so if they can’t handle it, that’s a serious issue. She agrees to help out. She meets up with Solkwyb, and the pair try to find some cause for the turtle’s sudden swell of numbers. It doesn’t take them long to find something out of place: a Roegardyn wearing heavy armor and staring silently out to sea. But it’s not just any armor. Kheris has seen it before.  Before her shock at seeing Ardbert’s armor and axe can register, the man turns and reveals glowing red eyes. He roars, and as if responding to his voice, giant turtles begin to rise from the ocean depths and charge!  Solk and Kheris are forced to defend themselves. The monsters keep coming no matter how many they slay, even though the red-eyed Roe vanished in the commotion. It seems like they’ll need to flee, but another Roegardyn with identical armor and axe joins the fray. For a moment, I thought they might be the same person since the new guy is wearing a helm that hides his hair. But after he takes out the largest turtle, we see his face. It’s clearly someone else. Amid the brawl, Solk takes note of the design of the newcomer’s axe. She mutters to herself that she’s seen it somewhere before. Yeah, it was two minutes ago on the other guy’s back. But no, she’s thinking of something else entirely. We’ll come back to that. Together the three of us drive off the beasts, and our savior introduces himself as Curious Gorge. He makes sure to include a threat in case anyone feels like making fun of his name.  Gorge is a good-natured guy, instantly liking Kheris and asking her if she’d be interested in the ancient ways of the Warrior. This is when Solk realizes where she recognized that axe. Roegardyn legends about Warriors describe similar weapons and fighting techniques lost to modern times. Except they haven’t been lost to Gorge’s tribe. In an isolated village far up in the Coerthas mountains, they’ve preserved and passed down these techniques for millennia. Sadly, the tradition is slowly going extinct. Warriors from the village once sold their skills as mercenaries since their lands are ill-suited for agriculture. But at some point, the folk of Eorzea began to shun them for reasons lost to history. In turn, younger generations are abandoning the training since it can no longer earn them money, which means the entire village is slowly dying. This is why Gorge came down from the mountains looking for disciples. If he doesn’t pass on the teachings, he may be the last Warrior.  Kheris thinks back to her confrontations with the Warriors of Darkness. Ardbert struck down the Primal Ravana with a single blow. She remembers how it felt to match her blade against his in that final duel in the Bowl of Embers and how his last words had been to embrace any source of strength if it meant protecting people. If this is indeed the same power he wielded, it would be a fitting way to honor that request. ~*~*~ She finds Gorge slashing at a waterfall with his axe, training to increase the speed and strength of his blows. I’m a complete sucker for waterfall training as a martial arts trope, so that puts a smile on my face. Her first lesson is on what makes a Warrior different from a Marauder, and the answer concerns what Gorge refers to as “the Inner Beast.” He’s vague on what exactly that is, except that it can be a source of power and is capable of guiding your blade if it’s properly controlled. He offers Kheris a new Soul Crystal and says that if the Inner Beast can be properly channeled, its energies will trigger the runes inscribed on the stone. This will confer techniques and provide magical enhancement to your physical strength and weapon while you fight. So, Warrior seems to function on a similar principle to Dragoon. You learn to tap a power inside you that serves as a source of superhuman ability, and when that power creates a resonance with a Soul Crystal, the effect is amplified. That still leaves the question of what precisely the Inner Beast is. With Dragoon, you’re told very clearly that your power source is a dragon’s soul, which becomes linked to your own or your armor via the medium of dragon blood (or the Eye). There’s no similar explanation for the Beast from Gorge. But the concept connects with the magical rules we’ve seen elsewhere. Consistency is always nice. It's also possible that Gorge simply doesn’t know what the Inner Beast is because his training is incomplete. Not only does he lack knowledge of Warrior’s true nature, he cannot even read the ancient tomes he brought with him that explain things. Fortunately, there’s someone else we can turn to for help:  Oh, so that’s who that crazy guy with the red eyes was. Surely Kheris will put two and two together on this and conclude the Roe she saw in the same armor and weapon is this missing brother. Then the story will be about tracking him down and figuring out why he’s riling up all these dangerous beasts. Wait, no, she won’t do that. She’ll just say nothing. Or possibly have a terrible case of amnesia regarding that entire beach incident. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since Solkwyb did the same thing. I promise I’m not going to harp on this problem too much. It runs through the entire Warrior storyline and might otherwise be the only thing I talk about. But God drat, did it piss me off that the game continually ignored that Kheris saw Gorge’s brother on that beach. She not only never says anything about it, she never even draws any connections between that incident and things that will happen in the future. The writers are mostly good about not forcing the Idiot Ball into the Warrior of Light’s hands, but this has got to be the most egregious example I’ve seen. Without anyone to help him, Gorge needs to translate the books page by page. It’s a slow process because his old commander from the Company of Heroes has him running all over Eorzea, hunting for a mysterious, bloodthirsty beast attacking settlements at random. Gee, I wonder who that could be? Surely not his wayward brother. Surely. He has found one useful thing in the books: information about a legendary armor set inscribed with the same runes as the Warrior’s Soul. Following Dragoon rules, it should further increase the resonance with the Inner Beast and thus make a Warrior even more powerful. Its last owner purportedly threw it from the highest mountain in Abalathia’s Spine centuries ago, so finding it won’t be an easy task. While he tries to translate more clues, he asks Kheris to begin formal training to harness the Inner Beast through a monster hunt. Her target is 'Leviathan of the Dunes,' an ancient sandworm that stalks the far south of Thanalan. Rumors of its size, strength, and thick hide make it clear that a mundane weapon and mortal power won’t even scratch the creature. My old pals, the U Tribe Miqo’te, tend to agree with those rumors when asked for advice on drawing the worm out. They tell Kheris stories of the creature devouring entire trade caravans and call her insane for taking it on. Kheris has dealt with far worse, of course, though it does allow me to appreciate how the quest designers littered the battleground with debris from Leviathan’s victims.  With this victory, the Warrior of Light makes her first contact with her Inner Beast. With it comes a new job feature, the Beast Gauge. Just a simple extra resource bar that fills when I use my main combo and an attack to spend it on, but I appreciate that verisimilitude. Plus, it makes red magic swirl around you, so that’s neat! ~*~*~ With 15 levels between me and the end of the ARR Warrior storyline, it was time to start grinding out some dungeons. This makes now an excellent time to talk about Patch 6.1. Since the last time I leveled up a job, Endwalker’s first major content patch dropped, and with it came (to my surprise as a former WoW player) content for the entire level range. Obviously, I couldn’t check out any post-90 stuff like the new Alliance Raid or the new MSQ story. But there was still a lot for me to play around with. I toyed with the Adventurer Plate system, which allows you to make a custom ID card for your character and share it with others, so they’ll know what type of content you like and when you typically play. I attempted to acquire housing using the revamped Lottery System and saw the hilarious “Winner is Bidder #0” mess firsthand. I successfully bought myself an apartment in Ishgard’s new Empyreum district when someone else got my desired housing plot. I dug deep into the massive PVP revamp, including the Crystal Conflict mode and the revived GARO cross-promotion event. I’ll talk about some of this in greater detail in future posts. For today’s purposes, we’re focusing on the last huge feature: the ARR dungeon revamp. It'd been some time since I’d done any dungeon roulettes. I’d burned out a bit grinding in the Mogstone event and didn’t want to have a bunch of my jobs shoot past Stormblood’s levels, as I did before Heavensward. As a result, I’d pretty much forgotten about the whole revamp thing until I popped into The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak and found a completely different dungeon.  Those who remember the original will note something important is missing from the room in this picture: the sticky slime which slowed players traversing the walkway. The eagle-eyed might even notice all the sunshine coming in through holes in the roof, making the place less gloomy. But this is just one room, and Toto-Rak was more or less rebuilt from the ground up. A nearly straight line replaced its original maze-like corridor design. Its party-splitting vacuum spiderwebs are mostly gone. The Magitek Generators and the Photocells you used to deactivate them are gone. On the one hand, this is a noticeable improvement from a gameplay standpoint. Toto-rak was reviled by most players for being a confusing slog of a dungeon that nobody was happy to see appear as their daily. But folks who’ve followed my LP from ARR will remember that I liked the original version a lot. Those now-removed gimmicks and the convoluted layout made the place feel like a dungeon in the Dungeons and Dragons sense rather than the videogame sense. To navigate it, you had to be mindful of your surroundings and solve a little puzzle that had notes on the walls explaining its presence. It was nice. I won’t deny that taking those things out makes the place a smoother and swifter run for repeat visits, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a downgrade for a first-time adventurer. Speaking of first-timers, I also noticed that before taking on the final boss, the cutscene where Lahabrea appears and mocks you before transforming the giant scorpion with his void magic did not play. It’s another good change because one of the little quirks of ARR was how big story moments could happen in the middle of dungeons, which left veteran players hanging around doing emotes while sprouts like me watched the movies. On at least one occasion, this allowed some toxic idiots to pull a boss and have it half-dead while I was still trying to enjoy the plot. It makes me wonder if the relevant cutscene still plays before the boss for a new player or if they remixed things so that the event plays out slightly differently and Lahabrea only appears after the boss goes down. Maybe I’ll make an alt and check it out sometime. A similar cutscene change can be observed in Stone Vigil. Instead of Lahabrea mugging for the camera before he enchants the Ice Dragon, the fight begins in earnest a few moments after you step in. A purple veil covers most of the arena to indicate the presence of the spell. One of the earlier bosses in the dungeon was also completely overhauled, focusing on a tornado dodging gimmick. Stone Vigil was also the place where I tested out another new system, Duty Support.  Now, if a new player isn’t comfortable grouping with random folks but doesn’t have a party of friends, they’re not forced to wait when the MSQ takes them to a dungeon. They can simply team up with some generic NPCs and run the dungeon with them. Technically, a system like this was already in the game in the form of Grand Company Adventure Squads. But getting those involves a substantial grind, so I’m not surprised they added a free and instantly-available version for new players. I also noticed that depending on which dungeon you do, your NPC buddies change from being Grand Company troopers to Scion members. The game is nothing if not detail-oriented. That said, the NPCs are on the slow side compared to actual players, so I didn’t use them much. Most of the other revamped dungeons have far more modest changes. Haukke Manor reorganized a few of its trash pulls and revamped the final boss, removing the old lantern gimmick in favor of summoning adds with various effects. They serve as a tutorial for abilities that require looking away or target swapping. Brayflox’s Longstop also changed some trash locations around to ease the navigation of the large pond area and revamped the final dragon boss to tutorialize layered explosions that escalate in intensity over time. Dzemael Darkhold smoothed out a couple of places on the map where you could get turned around and run into useless extra monsters. The Sunken Temple of Qarn removed the need to collect the keystones to progress. But aside from Toto-rak, no dungeon got a more extensive overhaul than Copperbell Mines. While Copperbell has no changes to the map, it does have a significant lighting change, removing many of the torches and making the place far darker and moodier. Several enemies have been removed to make pulls smaller, and the giants in the walls break out before you reach them with a far faster animation than they did before, exchanging surprise for game flow. But the biggest changes are to the bosses. The first Boss Giant’s enemy waves have been completely removed in favor of fighting him immediately. He now has a suite of AOE abilities and a new attack graphic I’d never seen before these revamps. I eventually realized it signified a tank buster.  The most tragic change is definitely the slime boss. The detonator players needed to use against him is completely gone, as is his splitting into smaller and smaller slimes as he takes damage. Instead, he simply throws out an AOE poison shot and makes mini-slimes that explode and need to be dodged. As for the Giant Prince, he no longer breaks his friends out of the walls and instead throws out a layered explosion AOE, as well as a full-arena AOE that can only be avoided by getting into a point-blank circle at his feet. Overall, I’d have to admit that these changes are probably a positive for the game. The ARR content being faster, more accessible, and more synchronized with the modern FFXIV design are good ways to address major criticisms that purportedly turned off a lot of beginners. But I can’t help but feel that some of these alterations come at the cost of personality. The early dungeons were weird and different, emphasizing the Role-Playing part of the game’s identity. While not all of them worked with the game’s focus on evergreen content and keeping veterans redoing old stuff as a pillar of design, it still makes me sad that fresh players will never see some of those bosses and dungeons in their original forms. Even if they were a chore on repeat, the first times through were special for me. Now those experiences are gone. Of course, we haven’t talked about every one of the revamps yet. But I’ll leave the rest for a future chapter. ~*~*~ While Kheris has been getting in touch with her Inner Beast and honing her powers, Curious Gorge has been studying, and he’s not happy about it. He fears he might end up a scrawny bookworm and lose all his battle instincts if translating keeps him from the field much longer. At least his research is bearing some fruit. He’s discovered why the folk of Eorzea turned on the Warriors. When the City-State militaries attempted to integrate Warriors into their ranks, many who undertook the training began to lose control of the Inner Beast. The carnage wrought by berserk Warrior trainees was so horrific that all nations passed laws banning the techniques. They even threatened imprisonment for any who would teach how to commune with the Inner Beast. It makes sense, but Gorge can’t square this story with his own experiences. He’s never heard of this problem nor seen a Warrior from his tribe’s ranks succumb to their Beast and rage out of control. Kheris has, but… *ahem* He presumes this history must be a lie intended to sabotage the Warriors. Still, he can’t understand why his people would allow those lies to stand unchallenged for generations while the Warrior ways slowly died and the village spiraled toward oblivion.   Rather than dwell on the mystery, Gorge decides it’s time to get proactive. Rumors about that monster he’s been chasing point toward Wineport as its next target. If we can take out the wild animals it’s riled up and then take it out, we’ll take our first serious step toward repairing the reputation of the Warrior. The Militia Captain at Wineport couldn’t be happier to see us. The animal attacks have been so relentless that he can’t keep men at both gates anymore due to the injuries. Gorge agrees to take up the unmanned gate alone while Kheris is asked to make a forward attack, cutting off the next wave before it reaches the walls so the local troops can rest. This works out pretty well, although the animal’s numbers are so vast that Gorge can’t hold them all and ends up fighting in the town’s streets. It’s nothing he can’t handle, but he’s forced to draw deeply upon his Inner Beast. The brutal power he brings to bear to slay the creatures is more than some townsfolk were prepared to see up close.  …  Gorge doesn’t take this well. The beast’s power retreats, and a look of utter shame and humiliation crosses his face. When Kheris tries to approach, he holds up his hands to ward her off and tells her to keep her distance before fleeing into the jungle. The Captain apologizes for the child’s behavior and asks Kheris to convey his thanks to Gorge for his efforts to protect the town. The big lug isn’t in a mood to accept the thanks when Kheris finds him.   Alongside his introspection about how perception might have influenced the shunning of the Warriors more than reality, Gorge mutters something important: both he and his brother stopped hearing the whispers of their ancestors through their Soul Stones some time ago. Every time I’ve unlocked a new Warrior skill, a system message informed me that it was these ancestral spirits that were passing on the teachings, so that’s pretty significant. That he’s quick to brush past the comment as if he doesn’t want her asking him questions about it only underscores this clear importance. Gorge’s next idea for restoring the Warrior name is to recover that lost set of legendary armor. He explains the suit he’s wearing (and I suppose Ardbert’s suit, though that raises the question about how similar the First and Eorzea are that I have no grounds to speculate about at the moment) is a replica of that original. The only difference between them is that the hero’s armor was inscribed with mystical runes similar to the Soul Stone. These runes increase the Inner Beast’s resonance and thus the Warrior’s power. Indeed, he suspects if we can find the armor, we’ll be able to carve the runes we find on it into any outfit we want and get the same effect. What a nice little lore nugget to allow Warrior players to change outfits without ostensibly losing their strength. As far as I know, every time my Dragoon got new armor, I needed to get a fresh vial of high-level dragon blood to empower it. I bet Vidofnir’s starting to think of me as a mosquito at this point. Now, there’s a hitch in this plan. Supposedly the original hero’s students attempted to recover the armor, but when they found it, the combined influence of all five pieces began to warp their minds and set them against each other. They were eventually able to figure out that their master had cast the armor from the mountain top in the first place because the runes had filled him with an all-consuming pride which made him believe he was so invincible that he did not need the armor’s blessings. This belief later got him killed. This armor seems absurdly dangerous, bordering on being cursed more than blessed. Not to worry, though, Curious Gorge has AN IDEA.    When Gorge proposed this, I honestly thought for a moment that I might have been working with the villain all along. That comment about how he and his brother had stopped hearing the ancestors. His brother’s actions and motives remaining a complete mystery. The lack of clarity regarding the shunning of the Warriors and Gorge being so desperate to bring them back. Realizing that I only have Gorge’s word for it that he’s translating the ancient texts accurately. It all seemed very suspicious when he started talking about how mass-producing the cursed armor is the obvious solution to its problem. To be fair, this was also because I glossed over an important part of the armor story: that the Five Students overcame their strife by dividing the five armor pieces among themselves. Each one of them went on to be a hero of legend in their own right, thanks to the power their fragment gave them. Gorge’s theory is that this worked out because equally dividing the armor made each Warrior’s power equal. Therefore, they had no reason to feel prideful like their teacher because none of them was clearly stronger. It isn’t an entirely unreasonable train of thought. Still, in the moment, all I could focus on was that making an entire army of Super Warriors in Cursed Armor wasn’t likely to be an innocent suggestion. This was another pretty standard “Retrieve your class set,” quest. However, this one also featured a little creative moment I liked. Walking toward one of the chests containing the armor caused a squid monster to emerge from the hole in the mountain geometry that served as the source of one of the area’s rivers. It was as if the thing had been living underground, and I’d disturbed it.  Very cool! When Kheris returns with three armor pieces, Gorge can immediately tell that the resonance between the runes, her Beast, and the Soul Stone works precisely as the texts explained. But he is troubled that there was no such magic when he attempted to wear the helm. This prompts him to more openly admit that he can no longer hear his ancestor’s whispers and explain that it happened more or less the moment that child in Wineport started screaming about him being a monster. While waiting for my return, he delved deeper into the texts and discovered that one with a weak heart could have the armor empower the Beast so much that it devours the wielder and sets them on a rampage which can only end with the Warrior’s death. Yes, a rampage just like… the animals we’ve been fighting! That’s right; the dialogue implies that the Warrior of Light asks explicitly about the animals and does not mention Gorge’s brother. Come the hell on… Also, wow, they are suddenly making Warrior seem like an insanely dangerous power. I honestly think that Kheris, having lived through the Fray incident, might have seriously considered leaving Warrior alone after hearing all this talk about being consumed by the Beast. However, there was a detail that stuck out to me. Rather than failing to work because of problems with his Soul Stone, Gorge believes that the armor sensed his heart’s weakness and thus closed off its power so it would not feed his Inner Beast while he was vulnerable. That implies that some higher power is watching over us in this endeavor. Perhaps the village ancestors? Perhaps one of the Twelve? Or maybe the revival of Warrior is part of the destiny in Kheris’ stars? Regardless, there’s something larger at work here, and Kheris feels she needs to see it through. For his part, Gorge says he will keep the breastplate until she is confident she can handle it. When she does return, Gorge is nervous but resolute. He tells Kheris plainly that if she feels the power overwhelming her for even a moment, she must cast the armor aside like the hero of legend, or she will become a raging monster. However, he also promises her that if the worst should come to pass, he will do whatever it takes to stop her. Then he further implores her to take the risk for the sake of his people and the generations of Warriors who deserve to come forth in the future as protectors of Eorzea. It’s a heartfelt little speech that does a lot to sell the idea that Gorge legitimately cares about you. It also reframes this whole episode a bit. The Warrior training is about more than just the Warrior of Light gaining some personal power to advance their ends. You’re standing up for a tradition of heroes going back thousands of years who have been (at least as far as the story has told you) unjustly maligned. You’re trying to single-handedly bring a force for good back into a world that could use more forces for good, and you’re doing it for the sake of a person who believed you were worthy based on nothing but a gut instinct. He needs you to carry the torch for him because he’s lost the capacity to do so himself. This is good stuff, to the point that I wish the entire Warrior story had been along these lines instead of it popping in at the end. And then the writers decided to ruin it.  Yeah, that’s right, immediately after that speech, Gorge just up and snatches the chest away from you because he’s decided he can’t trust you, nor can he trust himself, and thus you must once again go away and meditate until you think you’re really ready for it. Because I guess your last mediation wasn’t sufficient. This is here only because of the Standard Job Quest Formula, which every ARR job followed, in which you’re not permitted to have the breastplate of your set until the end of the story. Also, there must be a quest at level 45 where you collect the rest of your armor and then get an extra quest with some sort of plot point, and this weirdness is Warrior’s plot point. This setup has been an annoyance for me on several occasions, but it’s never been to the active detriment of the narrative until now. Having Gorge flip-flop like that right after his big emotional speech is beyond jarring; its borderline suspension of disbelief shattering. So much of this has been underwritten, failing to develop the ideas it presents. It’s also demanded the player not be bothered by an obvious hole in the story in the form of the brother you saw on the beach. The saving grace has been Gorge’s likability and how effectively it got you to care about him and his plight despite the story’s shortcomings. Now they’ve had him lift you onto a pedestal only to kick you down, undermining that bond, for no reason except the standardization of quest flow and rewards. What a dumb move. Rather than address this rift within the story (which it turns out would be very easy to do) or try to fix the body blow they delivered to the narrative in some sort of metatextual way, the final quest decides to try and skip past all by forcing us into some action. Much like they darted past the whole “WoL clearly saw his brother, but we can’t have her mention it, or the story falls apart,” issue! At least they’re consistent. Word has come from Wineport that the beast we’ve been hunting has shown itself at last, and we have to get over there and stop it once and for all. Or rather, GORGE must stop it. Several times he repeats that this moment is about him, HIS Warrior Arts, HIS worthiness to the ancestors. Even when they arrive at the town, he has Kheris go out beyond the wall and fight the minion animals because the main beast is HIS fight. Two guesses on who the beast ends up being.  We will soon learn that Gorge knew this beast was his brother all along. His excuse is that he was living in denial rather than trying to deceive the player character. That’s a stretch from my perspective, but it’s realistically the only thing the writers could attempt to sell that would save Gorge’s likability. Either way, things quickly take a turn for the dark. Gorge changes from trying to talk his brother into fighting the Inner Beast to ranting about how the man’s weakness will ruin everything he’s been working toward. The rant intensifies as Gorge pulls his weapon, and the camera takes us inside the older brother’s head and shows us through his eyes as Gorge begins mercilessly pounding his sibling into submission. Kheris arrives just in time to see the older brother collapse and hear Gorge mutter insanely to himself that no one will ruin this for him.  The story never makes this explicit, but I think the only way this makes sense is if Gorge elected to don the breastplate himself. For some reason, the Ancestors could not stop its power from feeding his Inner Beast, which in turn caused him to covet the four pieces Kheris was wearing like the old hero’s students. This is how you could have easily explained Gorge flip-flopping and snatching the armor away from the WoL. You returned to your meeting with three pieces while he only had one, which he gave you. All the writers had to do was make it explicit that the armor’s runes influenced him at that moment. Because of that influence, he took the chest. With its power feeding his Beast, he was manipulated into turning on you. I understand why they didn’t do that, though. Many players might have felt hesitant about their Warrior of Light wearing this cursed armor if it was to blame for Gorge’s behavior. It also has a Fridge Logic problem as an explanation because it might start you wondering why the Warrior of Light is totally fine wearing this armor when it had such a huge impact on Gorge. The only reason offered is that it has something to do with the ancestors and/or your character’s attitude, and that’s poorly drawn at best. Reraising the issues with the armor might even make the player wonder if Warrior is such a good idea in the first place, considering how badly the Inner Beast has screwed these two brothers up. Anyway, you fight Gorge one-on-one, and it’s pretty fun. He’s got a lot of HP and hits hard, encouraging you to use your tank CDs and killable Inner Fury sprites, which idle around the battlefield and will give you a heal if you destroy them. There’s also a final story beat in the fight where Gorge manages to overcome his Beast long enough to beg Kheris to stop him, showing that the guy you came to like is still in there; it wasn’t all a ruse, and his good side wasn’t consumed despite what the ancient texts claimed. It's not anything all that special as far as Level 50 Job Duty Quests go, but not bad. Also weird is that the little girl he terrorized earlier is hanging around the battlefield the whole time, but you can’t talk to her or interact with her, and there’s no payoff for her presence in the final cutscene. Speaking of, winning the fight causes Gorge to despair that all his work was for nothing because he was too weak. He also gives the only other explanation on offer as to why Kheris has handled this whole Inner Beast thing in stride.   The issue is internalized resentment. The mistreatment they received from the rest of Eorzea led this tribe to embrace anger and lose their warrior zen, making them vulnerable to the Inner Beast. Cue a vicious cycle where their reputation gets increasingly shredded because of their anger, people in Eorzea want them around less, and they get angrier because of the injustice of it all. This can sort of square with the idea that Gorge was doing better when he was in denial about his brother and therefore not resenting him. The combination of being publicly rejected by the little girl and then his jealousy of Kheris over the armor pieces made him vulnerable. Then his Beast exploded when he couldn’t ignore his brother anymore. But man, could they have told that story better than they actually did with some rewrites. We close out on Gorge letting his resentment go and vowing to start his Warrior training over from square one, embracing the resolve needed to control his Beast rather than his rage. He even promises to take care of his wounded brother so they can fight side by side again. The Militia Captain thanks him again and recognizes that Gorge is a good man who wants to help others despite all that's happened. Therefore, he requests that Warriors continue to protect Wineport going forward. Nothing from the little girl, as I said, but frankly, I’m glad we can wrap this up. Warrior is a bizarre story. Curious Gorge is very charismatic and fun to hang out with, but the plot they put him in feels like they threw a pile of spaghetti at the wall, saw what stuck, and then peeled off a few bits that stuck and stapled the juiciest meatballs on the floor into those spaces. There’s a severe lack of coherence and proper development in this plot and the Warrior lore, which is rare in this game. It’s like they changed their mind about what they wanted Warrior’s theme to be on three or four occasions while drafting the story and were never able to reconcile the disconnects. If you try hard enough, you can make something out of the final product, but the fact that I had to try so hard when most of the Job Stories have been clear and satisfying is an indictment of the writing, not praise. But drat, does that cursed armor look good.  We’re almost ready to set sail, but Curious Gorge isn’t entirely done with us yet. Some final adventures in Eorzea await as we hope to God that Warrior's story gets better after Level 50…
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Jul 8, 2022 04:54
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Ah, war quests. I'm surprised you came out of it liking Gorge as much as you did.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:15
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Sanguinia posted:Warrior is a bizarre story. Curious Gorge is very charismatic and fun to hang out with, but the plot they put him in feels like they threw a pile of spaghetti at the wall, saw what stuck, and then peeled off a few bits that stuck and stapled the juiciest meatballs on the floor into those spaces. There’s a severe lack of coherence and proper development in this plot and the Warrior lore, which is rare in this game. It’s like they changed their mind about what they wanted Warrior’s theme to be on three or four occasions while drafting the story and were never able to reconcile the disconnects. If you try hard enough, you can make something out of the final product, but the fact that I had to try so hard when most of the Job Stories have been clear and satisfying is an indictment of the writing, not praise. I think I'd agree. I like the idea of the warrior quests more than the actual meat of them. Kind of a proto-dark knight with NPCs making that struggle instead of you.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:16
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Leraika posted:Ah, war quests. I'm surprised you came out of it liking Gorge as much as you did. I couldn't blame anyone who came out of the end of these quests not liking him, but its hard to hold the fact that the script is a mess and forces him to do a bunch of stuff that doesn't really make sense against him for me. The parts of his character that are consistent are pretty likable in this stretch.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:20
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I’m surprised you found the old dungeon changes surprising as a WoW veteran. They do sometimes change a dungeon or two from Classic. Or at least did from Cataclysm to WoD? Also yeah, the linearity thing is pretty much never going away at this point, the art design will make it look nicer, but every dungeon in the game from here on out will be a fancy hallway more or less. Anyway, Warrior is a neat tank and the ARR stock quest design rears its ugly head again. This one does make an attempt to explain it, but as noted does so poorly.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:24
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Lord_Magmar posted:I’m surprised you found the old dungeon changes surprising as a WoW veteran. Its more that I found a major content patch doing anything except adding more poo poo onto endgame surprising. Too many years of World of Current Patchcraft.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:26
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The ARR job quests really boxed themselves in a corner with the whole "you must collect 4 out of your 5 job armor pieces at level 45" template.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:30
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I can't really remember the Heavensward Warrior quests, but those Stormblood Warrior quests were great. Loved them.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:32
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WAR in ARR levels isn't all that special, but honestly, no tank at 50 is very special. WAR becomes very special in HW levels, especially because of one skill in particular. No, not that one, the other one. The one that got something it didn't have before Endwalker.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:36
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Sanguinia posted:Its more that I found a major content patch doing anything except adding more poo poo onto endgame surprising. Too many years of World of Current Patchcraft. You know what, this is fair. It has kind of been that since Legion. They did at least update crafting in SL to not be a nightmare to level (you can level individual expansion crafting separately). However, this is pretty unique to the current dev situation in FFXIV. They haven’t done updates like this before and it is part of a larger effort to make the Trust system accessible for all MSQ dungeons. They’ll be doing HW next, with the shown example being Ysayle Estinien and Alphinaud as trust members for the mountain dungeon when you first go up to the Churning Mists. Usually their patches are in fact mostly new endgame stuff, and I don’t imagine they’ll actually touch ARR content again for a while.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:36
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The most I can say about the Warrior job story is that it sure was a thing that happened.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:40
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FuturePastNow posted:The most I can say about the Warrior job story is that it sure was a thing that happened. They did indeed.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:45
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Sanguinia posted:Toto-rak was reviled by most players for being a confusing slog of a dungeon that nobody was happy to see appear as their daily. But folks who’ve followed my LP from ARR will remember that I liked the original version a lot. Those now-removed gimmicks and the convoluted layout made the place feel like a dungeon in the Dungeons and Dragons sense rather than the videogame sense. To navigate it, you had to be mindful of your surroundings and solve a little puzzle that had notes on the walls explaining its presence. It was nice. I won’t deny that taking those things out makes the place a smoother and swifter run for repeat visits, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a downgrade for a first-time adventurer. Absolutely feel similarly about new-Toto-rak - it's much nicer to get in a roulette, but it's a bit less memorable(? best word I can think of) now. On the upside, there is one or two nice spots for taking screenshots that are new with the revamp (second corner, big ramp room after the first boss).
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Jul 8, 2022 05:46
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On a historical note, every ARR job quest except the two Arcanist branches (because they were only introduced in 2.0), Ninja (because it was only introduced in 2.4) and White Mage (which was completely rewritten) comes from patch 1.21 - there's nearly no difference in portraying events that should be taking place five years before 2.0, except that the cutscenes are stiffer (because 1.0's graphic system allowed for a bit more fluidity in animation - at some technical costs). The lead-in to Heavensward might have hit a bit different if Estinien's been (apparently) fine for five years after that messy little business in Central Coerthas instead of "didn't I just kick your rear end?" The loss of the more oddball mechanics from early dungeons may be a bit of a shame, but I feel more than anything that they just wanted to cut out various oddities and interactions to get the Duty Support to work cleanly. My personal complaint with Toto-Rak is that they didn't really do much with the boss fights other than have them waiting in the room and drastically cutting down on the sacs in the last fight. The two Coeurl o' Nine Tails fights never really had anything going for them, and Graffias isn't much more interesting other than the point the tail can be attacked.
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Jul 8, 2022 05:57
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I recently re-played ARR on an alt to see the MSQ changes (since they changed a few fights at the end into singleplayer instances, which is happening to The Steps of Faith in 6.2!) and those long cutscenes with Lahabreha before those two bosses are definitely still there. You might have the option to skip already seen cutscenes in dungeons turned on? The tankbuster marker is kind of an example of how long it can take for some of the standardised markers to come around, before they backported it to the revamped dungeons it's first appearance was in the first Shadowbringers alliance raid! Veotax fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 06:03
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While Kheris' history is different based on the story you're writing for her, the devs have gone on record saying that job quests occur at specific points in time, like how you can do Dragoon after Heavensward and run into Estinien for the first time from 30 - 50. I usually just go with the assumption that its history is based around the quest jingle. So if a quest is introduced in Stormblood, but has an ARR jingle, then it was probably something that happened in ARR. Or, at least, that's how I see it.Leraika posted:Ah, war quests. I'm surprised you came out of it liking Gorge as much as you did. Yeah, Gorge is just kind of there for me. Apparently, the WAR quests are also recycled wholesale from 1.0.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:03
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A lot of the boss fights in the remastered dungeons are introducing new players to mechanics that get used a lot later, with the standardized markers. The fights are a lot less weird as a result, but this is probably better for the game overall.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:05
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Veotax posted:I recently re-played ARR on an alt to see the MSQ changes (since they changed a few fights at the end into singleplayer instances, which is happening to The Steps of Faith in 6.2!) and those long cutscenes with Lahabreha before those two bosses are definitely still there. You might have the option to skip already seen cutscenes in dungeons turned on? No, I never turned that on. I just played half of the cutscene at the start of the Aery today because I had to run away from my computer.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:09
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FuturePastNow posted:A lot of the boss fights in the remastered dungeons are introducing new players to mechanics that get used a lot later, with the standardized markers. The fights are a lot less weird as a result, but this is probably better for the game overall. Yeah, the old state of things where you kinda just got a tour through old abandoned ideas until the HW patches, where they start figuring those things out, was... not great. From a mechanical perspective, anyway. I do wish they'd added a dfferent midboss fight to Toto-rak, but I think the changes are an improvement, overall. Now what they really need to fix are the tutorials that teach you how to play the game wrong 
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Jul 8, 2022 06:11
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I kind of wish they’d make the old Toto-Rak into a solo duty or something at some point, because that was one of the dungeons that gave me Big Tanxiety because I have a bad sense of direction and didn’t want to let any Actual People down. When I was messing around in there with Squadrons at my own pace I rather enjoyed poking around and seeing what weird poo poo I could find, though, so I kind of wish there was some kind of compromise. That does remind me I should probably poke around Sastasha in Duty Support too now that that’s an option.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:13
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Sanguinia posted:No, I never turned that on. I just played half of the cutscene at the start of the Aery today because I had to run away from my computer. Weird, maybe the game is set to automatically skip them now or something if you or everyone in the party has seen them before? Some kind of anti-trolling feature? I did them with NPCs using Duty Support, but I can't imagine they would make newbies skip them if they did the dungeons with real people.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:23
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as someone who's never turned skip cutscenes on, the way it goes is that when you're there the first time, you get the laha cutscene. any time you're there after that, you get the short "oh hey a spider" cutscene. however, that is flagged player-to-player, so if you're there for your fifteenth trip through but you're queued with someone doing it for the first time, you get "oh hey a spider" while they get "oh hi lahabrea"
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Jul 8, 2022 06:36
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hexwren posted:as someone who's never turned skip cutscenes on, the way it goes is that when you're there the first time, you get the laha cutscene. any time you're there after that, you get the short "oh hey a spider" cutscene. however, that is flagged player-to-player, so if you're there for your fifteenth trip through but you're queued with someone doing it for the first time, you get "oh hey a spider" while they get "oh hi lahabrea" Yep. Same deal with Stone Vigil. First time through, you get Blahblahbrea, any subsequent visits it's just, "oh, hey, angy dragon."
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Jul 8, 2022 06:44
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hexwren posted:as someone who's never turned skip cutscenes on, the way it goes is that when you're there the first time, you get the laha cutscene. any time you're there after that, you get the short "oh hey a spider" cutscene. however, that is flagged player-to-player, so if you're there for your fifteenth trip through but you're queued with someone doing it for the first time, you get "oh hey a spider" while they get "oh hi lahabrea" Fun fact, even if you have the option to skip previously played cutscene on, the second time you play the dungeon it will play the cutscene anyway because it is a new cutscene.
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Jul 8, 2022 06:49
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Hogama posted:On a historical note, every ARR job quest except the two Arcanist branches (because they were only introduced in 2.0), Ninja (because it was only introduced in 2.4) and White Mage (which was completely rewritten) comes from patch 1.21 - there's nearly no difference in portraying events that should be taking place five years before 2.0, except that the cutscenes are stiffer (because 1.0's graphic system allowed for a bit more fluidity in animation - at some technical costs). The lead-in to Heavensward might have hit a bit different if Estinien's been (apparently) fine for five years after that messy little business in Central Coerthas instead of "didn't I just kick your rear end?" Well that certainly explains a lot. I was wondering why Estinien just is suddenly like "Oh, I got over that in therapy" about his very recent possession. hexwren posted:as someone who's never turned skip cutscenes on, the way it goes is that when you're there the first time, you get the laha cutscene. any time you're there after that, you get the short "oh hey a spider" cutscene. however, that is flagged player-to-player, so if you're there for your fifteenth trip through but you're queued with someone doing it for the first time, you get "oh hey a spider" while they get "oh hi lahabrea" That is downright bizarre. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 07:13
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The dungeon revamps are cool, and I certainly fall on the positive side for Copperbell's changes in particular. It was always an utter slog before, even if it was unique. Now, Curious Gorge... To be blunt, this man is my most disliked NPC in the entire game. His breastplate confiscation moment in the L45 quests reads to me like he's projecting crippling self-doubt onto the WoL; he definitely has some personal issues to deal with.
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Jul 8, 2022 07:29
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I must dissent this opinion that the Copperbell Slime boss was anything ever worth experiencing. Primarily because only one and a half people even got to participate, outside of a single spriggan arriving from time to time. It could have been revamped in a way to maintain its flavor but fix the participation issue, certainly, but I'd never want to inflict its original form on a newbie.
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Jul 8, 2022 08:02
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All the boss mechanic updates are good, the loss of feeling is very much in the spaces between bosses becoming hallways with nothing but mobs in them.
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Jul 8, 2022 08:10
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HW on dungeon are also just hallways with mobs but there’s at least interesting scenery in the background instead of “we’re reusing these cave graphics we made for the in overworld dungeons in 1.0” that so many of the ARR dungeons are.
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Jul 8, 2022 08:18
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In retrospect it was obviously Gorge's brother on the beach, but I always read it as Gorge himself. So the WoL not bringing up the rampaging warrior made sense because, to me, they weren't strong enough to stop him yet. It also excused all the dumb moments as Gorge being on the verge of relapsing. I am not a very observant person.
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Jul 8, 2022 08:59
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It's been almost a decade now but I still can't get over how good Curious Gorge's name is
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Jul 8, 2022 09:01
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DoubleNegative posted:In retrospect it was obviously Gorge's brother on the beach, but I always read it as Gorge himself. So the WoL not bringing up the rampaging warrior made sense because, to me, they weren't strong enough to stop him yet. It also excused all the dumb moments as Gorge being on the verge of relapsing. This is just one of like six ideas I had that would have made Warrior 30-50 excellent instead of a mess. Nice to know great minds think alike :P
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Jul 8, 2022 09:16
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Runa posted:It's been almost a decade now but I still can't get over how good Curious Gorge's name is Is the joke original to the English translation? I've always sort of wondered DoubleNegative posted:In retrospect it was obviously Gorge's brother on the beach, but I always read it as Gorge himself. So the WoL not bringing up the rampaging warrior made sense because, to me, they weren't strong enough to stop him yet. It also excused all the dumb moments as Gorge being on the verge of relapsing. I mean, even with it being his brother, I found it pretty obvious that Gorge wasn't doing great in the ARR quests. The writing can be clumsy about it, but I feel like he's pretty obviously in a cycle of growing emotional instability and denial, on top of just kind of being a dumb guy who pushes himself and the WoL to do things that aren't good ideas given how fragile he is.
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Jul 8, 2022 09:26
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Antivehicular posted:Is the joke original to the English translation? I've always sort of wondered According to the FF wiki, his Japanese name is literally just a transliteration of Curious Gorge: (キュリアス・ゴージ, Kyuriasu Gōji)
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Jul 8, 2022 09:31
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