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Dareon posted:
Alchemist StB is wild with the lore bomb if you haven't played 1.0, I was shocked
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Jan 20, 2023 09:28
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:DRK was a cop but took the Chris Dorner approach. 
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Jan 20, 2023 16:18
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Any advice to someone who's brand new to Bozja? I headed over there because I eventually want to get one of the Resistance weapons 'cause it looks cool. Is there anything I should do other than run around and bash enemies until the good stuff drops?
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Jan 21, 2023 20:49
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Selachian posted:Any advice to someone who's brand new to Bozja? I headed over there because I eventually want to get one of the Resistance weapons 'cause it looks cool. Is there anything I should do other than run around and bash enemies until the good stuff drops? You're going to get fragments and stuff from the enemies, that can be exchanged for lost actions. These are generally consumable abilities, although some have no limit, and can be extremely powerful. Use them. There's no point in holding on to them. Other than that, yeah, farm fates, join CEs, get mettle.
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Jan 21, 2023 20:53
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hey i'm a sprout I just did the "probably pirates" quest or whatever it's called. I am into the game for sure but it is pretty boring lol. about how long does it take to get to good stuff from here? I saw something online that said A Realm Reborn alone was 120 hours, which seems absolutely insane to me but maybe it is??
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Jan 22, 2023 01:42
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Paperhouse posted:hey i'm a sprout Depends what you mean by "the good stuff". The basic MSQ (main scenario quests) gameplay loop doesn't change, just being an excuse for you to move between story cutscenes, though the stakes of the story it's telling build up. Combat slooowly gets better as they add more abilities, most jobs feel "shape of how it's supposed to play"-complete somewhere by level 60, though that varies based on job and what people consider that threshold to be.
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Jan 22, 2023 01:48
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ARR probably isn't 100 hours. 40 maybe, unless you're really taking your time or doing side content. 10-20 more for the pre Heavensward patches. If it's the walking around, talking to NPCs and watching cutscenes that you don't like, that never changes. That's the story delivery for the entire game. The writing, pacing, et al. gets better on all fronts but the structure is still that. The actual combat content - raids, etc., kinda start around level 50, but really hit their stride as each expansion passes. It really depends what you're looking for though. Orcs and Ostriches fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jan 22, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2023 01:50
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The good news is that you've hit dungeons, and they're pretty consistent with laying those out at a decent pace from that point on. The bad news is that you've got a lot to go before even level 50, where a lot of the optional stuff opens up.
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Jan 22, 2023 01:52
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I will say, if you're looking for the boss fights to feel big and dangerous, that's either going to be the first Trial in the early 20s (though a pushover difficulty-wise from gearing/power creep it's still got spectacle going for it) or the end of the ARR MSQ at level 49-50 (recently got a rework where they brought in a lot of current design ideas, so the fights are very epic in terms of what they throw at you compared to the old content).
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Jan 22, 2023 01:54
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at the moment i'm mainly interested in the plot, it's felt pretty much like a single player game to me so far and that's fine. I may be interested in more multiplayer stuff later but for now I just want to play through the story. I don't mind the way the MSQ works, I was just worried that I still had like 90 hours of fetch/kill quests to do before it got interesting
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Jan 22, 2023 02:22
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Paperhouse posted:at the moment i'm mainly interested in the plot, it's felt pretty much like a single player game to me so far and that's fine. I may be interested in more multiplayer stuff later but for now I just want to play through the story. I don't mind the way the MSQ works, I was just worried that I still had like 90 hours of fetch/kill quests to do before it got interesting Heavensward (first expansion) is definitely a cut above. The story starts to come together in the 45-50 range, but Heavensward is really where it starts showing its quality.
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Jan 22, 2023 02:26
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Paperhouse posted:hey i'm a sprout Jocat put it really well in the video essay he put out a while back. A Realm Reborn definitely has its slow moments, its dull moments, but it spends a lot of time setting up worldbuilding and planting seeds that the plot will harvest later; sometimes much later. This is a game where you want to pay attention to the storytelling, and all the little details in the world, talk to side characters - repeatedly even, as they will frequently have new things to say as the story develops. But above all else, it's the sort of game where ignoring or skipping past all the story is completely missing the point. This is a game where the plot, and the journey to level cap is part of the destination, not an obstacle to it. I will say, the leadup to the second and third Primal fights are generally seen as the weakest parts of A Realm Reborn story-wise, but the way I see it, if you can stay interested and get past those parts, you're probably in it for the long haul. In terms of gameplay loop though, Bruceski did hit the nail on the head; if you're looking for the gameplay loop of the quests themselves to improve, it's not really going to. For dungeons, bear in mind that they've been in the process of adding older content to the Duty Support system for the last few patches, but they're not quite done yet. 6.3 finished adding the rest of the Heavensward Dungeons to Duty Support, but once you hit Stormblood, for now the dungeons still require other people, as will any 8-player trials throughout MSQ, with a single, very very very late exception. But for any 4-player dungeons throughout ARR, Heavensward, or Shadowbringers and Endwalker, you will have the option of having NPCs join you instead of other players, and while slower than players, they're reliable, and pressure-free, and will even offer commentary as you progress through the dungeon (watch for their dialogue bubbles!). Once you hit Heavensward, the generic NPCs will start making way for more plot-relevant characters. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Jan 22, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2023 02:29
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Paperhouse posted:at the moment i'm mainly interested in the plot, it's felt pretty much like a single player game to me so far and that's fine. I may be interested in more multiplayer stuff later but for now I just want to play through the story. I don't mind the way the MSQ works, I was just worried that I still had like 90 hours of fetch/kill quests to do before it got interesting The gameplay of MSQ will always be "go to place, talk to person, kill a thing, sometimes do a duty/dungeon/trial". The quality of places, talking, people and duties/dungeons/trials will skyrocket though.
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Jan 22, 2023 02:52
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I haven't played reworked HW yet so I can't comment on the new stuff (I was right ahead of the reworks for ARR and HW and so far haven't gotten thrown in Roulette for most new stuff, though the first thing I did after queuing for Roulette as a baby DRK was get extremely disoriented in Smooth Toto-rak) but at least my experience with it is that while the game really hits its stride with design in Stormblood, even before then the complexity ramped up in a really nice way once you escape the training wheels and can do trials, and I'm certain it's been improved even beyond the 2.0 endgame reworks (which I only have a couple quibbles with in terms of what they removed, and am very fond of what was added). As has been said, core loop never really changes but the nodes you hit to do the loop improve a lot.
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Jan 22, 2023 03:21
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Paperhouse posted:at the moment i'm mainly interested in the plot, it's felt pretty much like a single player game to me so far and that's fine. I may be interested in more multiplayer stuff later but for now I just want to play through the story. I don't mind the way the MSQ works, I was just worried that I still had like 90 hours of fetch/kill quests to do before it got interesting ARR is structured around the story of each zone/city-state, before gradually tying it together in the 40-50s. The post ARR content acts as an epilogue tying up some loose ends but ends up laying basically all the seeds for every expansion after. Each HW after that tends to have tighter storytelling and being more engaging in general, which is typically why people say that's when the game gets good since the story feels more compelling even though you're technically still doing the exact same things you did throughout all of ARR. Mechanically, you will get to see hints of how the gameplay will improve in the final stuff of ARR at least, since they basically reworked all those fights to resemble the game's current battle design.
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Jan 22, 2023 06:21
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Even ARR 2.0 has some interesting story stuff, the Corethas section after Titan being one of them. Long story short, the seeds of the plot start in the 2.x patches (which are slow but have a lot of good worldbuilding, and are kind of underrated imho), the writing kicks up a notch in Heavensward, the gameplay really comes together in Stormblood and then Shadowbringers kicks everything even further above. Not that the stuff before ShB is bad at all, though -- there are a lot of real good story and gameplay moments all through the previous expansions and patches.
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Jan 22, 2023 07:46
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TL;DR: The game doesn't fundamentally change at any point, but it does incrementally get better and better as time goes on.
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Jan 22, 2023 08:15
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after ARR they also started working with a different voice acting studio and basically every character gets re-cast aside from some later-introduced characters. so you can look forward to a pretty abrupt and significant improvement in the VA
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Jan 22, 2023 10:29
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susan b buffering posted:after ARR they also started working with a different voice acting studio and basically every character gets re-cast aside from some later-introduced characters. so you can look forward to a pretty abrupt and significant improvement in the VA Read: they hired actual British people instead of people putting on silly accents
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Jan 22, 2023 10:57
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Yeah, with the launch of Heavensward they switched to a British studio for all their VA work instead of using the California firm they had been working with. Probably because the close proximity to the EU let them handle all the non-Japanese language tracks with the same management staff. They've got people from various parts of England representing the different nations of Eorzea and in Shb they even brought in some Icelandic voice actors to do an exotic community.
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Jan 22, 2023 11:14
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Kwyndig posted:Yeah, with the launch of Heavensward they switched to a British studio for all their VA work instead of using the California firm they had been working with. Probably because the close proximity to the EU let them handle all the non-Japanese language tracks with the same management staff. They've got people from various parts of England representing the different nations of Eorzea and in Shb they even brought in some Icelandic voice actors to do an exotic community. Also Norwegian for another exotic group of people in ShB, and then various SE Asian people for a third group of exotic people in Endwalker. Which can be kinda funny when it comes to minor throwaway characters or crowd murmuring scenes in Thavnair because you’ll have a lot of Indian actors doing Indian accents and then you’ll get someone from the normal bank of throwaway NPC actors with a normal English accent because for some reason they didn’t want the Englishmen putting on Indian accents. 
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Jan 22, 2023 12:03
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Selachian posted:Any advice to someone who's brand new to Bozja? I headed over there because I eventually want to get one of the Resistance weapons 'cause it looks cool. Is there anything I should do other than run around and bash enemies until the good stuff drops? Orcs and Ostriches posted:You're going to get fragments and stuff from the enemies, that can be exchanged for lost actions. These are generally consumable abilities, although some have no limit, and can be extremely powerful. Use them. There's no point in holding on to them. Wanna add onto this a bit. Without getting too deep into the weeds, natural monsters (lions, snakes, plants and the like) drop fragments, while magitek and robots drop bozjan clusters. You eventually want clusters for various niceties especially if you want to make resistance weapons, but some of the most useful fragment you can get are Fragments of Awakening, which drop from monsters in the second region of Bozjan Southern Front (Old Bozja). Other than that, I'll let you know that the most annoying step for Resistance Weapons in 2023 is the Delubrum step, which'll be slog if you try to do it by yourself. Keep an eye out for PFs that are running the content, make sure you have Pure Essences stocked for the job you'll be running it on, and it should be a lot less painful. quick edit: since you said resistance "weapons" once the best things you can do to optimize your time spent is to stack up quests so you can progress them all at the same time. green memories can drop from normal monsters in southern front, and crystal memories can drop from CEs, both of which you'll be farming anyway to get more red/blue/yellow fragments for the first step. Vitamean fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 22, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2023 18:36
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So everyone in the Ivalice raids kind of sucks, right, it's not just me?
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Jan 22, 2023 19:18
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Funky Valentine posted:So everyone in the Ivalice raids kind of sucks, right, it's not just me? Oh, they're all terrible. Hancock is legitimately the least trash person to show up (which, lmao), and iirc they might have cut him out of that questline when they made Ridorana less of a pain to unlock? e: Mikoto's fine too I guess Arist fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 22, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2023 19:22
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Every time Ramza opens his mouth the Warrior of Light should threaten to throw him off the airship.
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Jan 22, 2023 19:41
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Agrias did nothing wrong. Now and forever.
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Jan 22, 2023 19:43
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Funky Valentine posted:So everyone in the Ivalice raids kind of sucks, right, it's not just me? Couldn't tell if you were talking about the other people in the raid or people in the storyline. Arist posted:Oh, they're all terrible. Hancock is legitimately the least trash person to show up (which, lmao), and iirc they might have cut him out of that questline when they made Ridorana less of a pain to unlock? I always felt like Ba'gamnan comes out of that storyline looking the best which is pretty funny.
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Jan 22, 2023 19:57
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My big issue with the raid narrative isn't even the troupe (which was a good idea with terrible execution and characters, mind you), its that (FFT spoilers) they messed and took all the ambiguity out of Delita's character at the end
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Jan 22, 2023 20:06
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I genuinely have no idea what was going on in that raid because I've never played FFT and thus had no nostalgia for it. Also there's so many places and people and events being delivered rapid fire purely through dry text boxes that my brain glazed over every time. "Teaching a Robot To Love Through Violence" was much more understandable. I also have no idea what was going on in or after the ShB alliance raids, but I suspect that was more intentional. That raid series also makes people on the official forums mad, so it's that much better.
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Jan 23, 2023 03:01
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Nothing that happened in FFT had any relation to what happened in the raid line. The names are the same but the stories are different.
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Jan 23, 2023 03:02
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1stGear posted:I also have no idea what was going on in or after the ShB alliance raids, but I suspect that was more intentional. That raid series also makes people on the official forums mad, so it's that much better. Yoko Taro just doing Yoko Taro things, as he does.
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Jan 23, 2023 03:03
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hopeandjoy posted:Also Norwegian for another exotic group of people in ShB, and then various SE Asian people for a third group of exotic people in Endwalker. Vrtra's VA is a white guy and he also did Gosetsu. Not gonna rag the guy too much because both performances were really good but lmao
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Jan 23, 2023 05:05
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susan b buffering posted:after ARR they also started working with a different voice acting studio and basically every character gets re-cast aside from some later-introduced characters. so you can look forward to a pretty abrupt and significant improvement in the VA always gonna miss Sam Riegel and Taliesin Jaffe though
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Jan 23, 2023 08:43
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barclayed posted:always gonna miss Sam Riegel and Taliesin Jaffe though SAM RIEGEL WAS ARR ALPHINAUD?!
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Jan 23, 2023 09:25
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I love Sam Riegel but new Alphinaud fits the character better.
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Jan 23, 2023 09:45
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Yeah, Sam Riegel Alphinaud just sounded like a pompous rear end in a top hat instead of a kid a little over his head.
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Jan 23, 2023 09:48
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I maintain the Alphinaud's actor change works really well for his character arc as he goes from a little shithead to choking on an entire humble pie. And maybe it's because I'm far enough removed from it now, but I don't recall any of the main ARR actors being outright bad*, the later ones are just better. *Except Minfilia and Alisaie.
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Jan 23, 2023 09:57
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1stGear posted:I maintain the Alphinaud's actor change works really well for his character arc as he goes from a little shithead to choking on an entire humble pie. Repeatedly choking, his character seems to be rapidly evolving into The Most Dunkable Boy On Hydaelyn.
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Jan 23, 2023 10:16
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1stGear posted:I maintain the Alphinaud's actor change works really well for his character arc as he goes from a little shithead to choking on an entire humble pie. Thought she got better during the post-2.0 patches, during the main story of 2.0, Nanamo's voice was horrendous.
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Jan 23, 2023 10:30
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Still, at least no ARR voice is worse than Japanese Tataru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4IS3DseyM
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Jan 23, 2023 10:52
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