|
that does bring up that it's gonna be helpful to post... idk, somewhere? that if someone's planning on upgrading from the free trial/starter edition to dawntrail that buying whatever new Complete Edition there is won't allow them to access shb and ew until dt's release date. comes up every expansion I feel like.
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 01:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
Yeah it happens every expansion somebody buys the pack and is like why can't I play Shadowbringers etc until it comes out and that's just the way it goes. If you want expansions access early you gotta buy the earlier expansion.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 01:49
|
|
|
404notfound posted:Oh hey, just noticed that there's a newbie thread. Started on the Xbox beta a few weeks ago, and I'm at level 56 on my dragoon and about to start the 2.3 quests. Hoping to hit 60 soon so I can give tanking with GNB a try. Huh, what's this about free starter edition on game pass? Since everything up to shadowbringers is already in the free trial, what do you actually get? e: found an article and it says that it's just through stormblood which is already free via free trial. So I guess you would just get it if you want to have access to the full game's features and start paying a sub. Professor Beetus fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 20, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 02:29
|
|
|
You can also invest in huge stacks of gysahl greens and glamour dispellers. Some of the minions and orchestrions available to buy are kinda hard to find, like some are only available after clearing certain FATES or FATE chains.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 05:31
|
|
|
Professor Beetus posted:Huh, what's this about free starter edition on game pass? Since everything up to shadowbringers is already in the free trial, what do you actually get? extremely importantly, you cannot do the level 70 ultimate raids under the free trial, so you cannot be a free trial legend.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 06:17
|
|
|
YggiDee posted:If you're on a free trial you can't play Gunbreaker, that and Dancer were added in Shadowbringers Ah cripes, I did read up on things but somehow confused Stormblood with Shadowbringers  And yeah, I noticed there's actually not too much to spend money on at the moment, but I'm just looking for something to dump gil into so I'm not just sitting at the cap and letting all the quest rewards go to waste. I did stumble on a source that suggested crafting glamour prisms by stocking up on undyed velveteen and clear prisms, so I might give that a try. I started a few of the beast tribes but I don't think I really want to grind them out just so I can spend my money. Now that I need to buy Endwalker to play gunbreaker anyway, I'll probably just do that when the game officially releases for Xbox on Thursday
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 06:25
|
|
|
404notfound posted:I did stumble on a source that suggested crafting glamour prisms by stocking up on undyed velveteen and clear prisms, so I might give that a try. You can do this, but note that all the glamour prism recipes require materials that are best bought from beast tribes. You just need the first or second rank, but still. The bigger problem is probably that mass crafting prisms will run you out of crafting crystals, and getting more crystals without market board access will be both very annoying and very inefficient. Stocking up on Gysahl Greens and Grade 5+ Dark Matter is probably your best bet. If you can be arsed to rank up beast tribes once or twice then maybe Sylkis Buds (Vath rank 1, early in HW), Steel Ingots and Plates (Amalj'aa rank 1) or the Soot Black and Snow White dyes (Ixal rank 3) are good use of a bag slot; they should marketboard well if/when you buy the game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 09:54
|
|
|
you could start leveling crafters and gatherers by turning in vendor materials / gear to your GC, that will spend some of your gil and you don't have to worry about cluttering your bags or accessing the market board 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 11:15
|
|
|
Reminds me, I probably oughta level all crafters and gatherers to 90 before Dawntrail starts.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 10:16
|
|
|
Attack on Princess posted:I went in expecting to bounce off because everyone says it's a story focused MMO, and WoW broke my ability to enjoy RPG dialogue ages ago. Through some wizardry they've found a way to make MMO lore palatable and engaging. The wizardry is that unlike blizzard they don't suck major rear end at sorytelling
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 13:42
|
|
|
Kazinsal posted:Reminds me, I probably oughta level all crafters and gatherers to 90 before Dawntrail starts. Don't forget your daily GC supply and provisioning missions!
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 14:13
|
|
|
Zlodo posted:The wizardry is that unlike blizzard they don't suck major rear end at sorytelling Story in 14 isn't sacrificed for gameplay, and more importantly, story isn't skipped over when a new expansion comes out. For WoW, the story in the leveling experience is generally just setup for the REAL story to be told in raids and max-level content, none of which is seen by players just leveling up to get to the expansion after this. In FF14, nearly everything is gated behind MSQ Progression; max-level story content directly sets up the next expansion, and requires you to play through that max-level story content in order to access that next expansion. If anything, an argument can be made that FF14 sacrifices gameplay in the name of story, the complete opposite of WoW's approach, where if you're leveling through old content, you have to go way out of your way to see the full story. Here, you HAVE to progress through the story to get access to whatever current endgame you're trying to get at. Of course, there's also the factor of WoW encouraging alts, whereas FF14 largely discourages them by allowing a single character to access all classes and jobs and switch freely between them, and very, very little being shared between different characters on the same account. So WoW players have leveled up through the same content many, many more times than the average ff14 player has leveled up through the MSQ. They're very different approaches, but FF14 is definitely the one that values story, and presents it well. FF14 may be an MMO, but frankly, it's a Final Fantasy game first, and an MMO second. Hell, they're still moving even further in that direction as they go along, what with adding Duty Support to allow players to stay solo by providing NPCs for MSQ Dungeons instead of requiring interaction with other players. Only Trials and Crystal Tower still require grouping with other players when it comes to MSQ-required content.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 15:49
|
|
|
BlazetheInferno posted:They're very different approaches, but FF14 is definitely the one that values story, and presents it well. FF14 may be an MMO, but frankly, it's a Final Fantasy game first, and an MMO second. about that... After I took a break from ARR I still had an itch to play a Final Fantasy, so I picked up FFX. Man, being (almost) fully voiced adds SO MUCH. And animations that aren't just basic gestures. Even though FFX is a decade+ older than ARR, is still extremely linear, and probably has mechanically similar quests (go to a place, listen to dialogue, fight people), I'm just way more engaged in the narrative because of the presentation. I know FFX isn't an MMO and it's maybe not a fair comparison, but I really think they should go back and add voice acting to the ARR MSQ. Especially if it's really that important to the rest of the FFXIV story.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 16:12
|
|
|
AndrewP posted:I know FFX isn't an MMO and it's maybe not a fair comparison, but I really think they should go back and add voice acting to the ARR MSQ. Especially if it's really that important to the rest of the FFXIV story. Or at least go back and rerecord with the VAs/acting direction used from Heavensward and after. The voice work does have some "we don't know if we're going to be successful" quality to it, and it shows even more if you ever go back through it. The question is: is it worth the time/expense to do so?
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 16:23
|
|
|
ReverendHammer posted:
This is ultimately the most important question and unfortunately the answer is probably no. It would be nice to have but the cost is considerable.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 16:24
|
|
|
For better or worse, FFXIV is a much slower burn than any of the fully-voice FF games. There are so many scenes that are about the team getting together to discuss fantasy-science mumbo jumbo, political maneuverings and implications, and other long-winded topics. So not only would making ALL the cutscenes voice acted make the game files hilariously enormous, but I still don't think it would make audiences riveted to their seats if they otherwise get bored with reading and long expository scenes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 16:27
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:For better or worse, FFXIV is a much slower burn than any of the fully-voice FF games. There are so many scenes that are about the team getting together to discuss fantasy-science mumbo jumbo, political maneuverings and implications, and other long-winded topics. So not only would making ALL the cutscenes voice acted make the game files hilariously enormous, but I still don't think it would make audiences riveted to their seats if they otherwise get bored with reading and long expository scenes. This is exactly why I'm happy they aren't all voice acted. There's enough dialogue that it would get really tedious after a while.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 16:30
|
|
|
I think sometimes text is also used because they want the Scions/other characters to use your actual name rather than referring to you by names such as "The Warrior of Light" or "Hero" or whatever else. It might just be me but I like when NPCs use the actual name of my character.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 17:07
|
|
|
If it breaks your immersion because you don't have a lore-appropriate name and the scions say stuff like "Praise the Twelve, I am glad you are safe, Weedlord!" then that's very much a 'you' problem.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 17:09
|
|
|
Can't wait for the first game to use AI to get the game to audibly say your name in a cutscene Urianger: "The survivors gather, xxxSephiroth420 Gothgirlxxx and ignite a fiery dawn to burn away the glowering shroud. Ah, but destiny, thou art beautiful..."
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 17:14
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk4KBvTz_2k my fav is Boyfriend Materia
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 17:28
|
|
|
I want to know how many tries it took to get through saying Pupipi Pupi without laughing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 18:47
|
|
|
Maximum Tomfoolery posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk4KBvTz_2k I recognize almost all of those names as people from my server lol
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 19:18
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:I think sometimes text is also used because they want the Scions/other characters to use your actual name rather than referring to you by names such as "The Warrior of Light" or "Hero" or whatever else. It might just be me but I like when NPCs use the actual name of my character. Yeah same. The game flat out would not have the same charm if, when I bump into someone I know from some other questline or job, they didn't give me some equivalent of "Oh hey, [Name], good to see you again." or whatever like they do now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2024 20:39
|
|
|
BlazetheInferno posted:Story in 14 isn't sacrificed for gameplay, and more importantly, story isn't skipped over when a new expansion comes out. For WoW, the story in the leveling experience is generally just setup for the REAL story to be told in raids and max-level content, none of which is seen by players just leveling up to get to the expansion after this. In FF14, nearly everything is gated behind MSQ Progression; max-level story content directly sets up the next expansion, and requires you to play through that max-level story content in order to access that next expansion. It's not just that, the writing in WoW is just awful. And they are trying to juggle too many characters, not leaving enough time to develop them. And it leads them to rely too much on exposition dumps, instead of building up things more organically over time. Blizzard also have a huge "taking your audience for idiots" problem, where characters keep pointing out obvious things. It's not just a matter of prioritizing gameplay over story (where is wow's vaunted good gameplay anyway, outside of pvp?), it's skill issues.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 11:48
|
|
|
WoW has had consistently good raid design for decades and while I hate to hand it to 'em they blow MSQ gameplay out of the water. The only real exception is a good single player duty and even those tend to be simplified 1-2-3 + heal that can't fail to outpace the boss that are sold by the strength of the story. Shadowbringers Spoiler: Thancred vs Ranjit! Even something as hilariously badly written as Shadowlands still sells you on playing your class to the best of it's abilities to get done 3-5 interesting gameplay tasks in a new area. FF14 will make you care more about the zone storyline and resolve it nicely but it's a visual novel you sometimes endure that might occasionally ask you to use a fraction of your rotation to kill three meaningless monsters. WoW will give you a little story build up and then you have a good gameplay session of kill 12-30 guys, click on doodads to set bombs or something, and some interesting story bit with a sympathetic escort or something and you can speed it up by being good at the game and chain/multi-pulling, etc. doing things simultaneously instead of step by step is also a pleasing way to shorten the mandatory zone story quest lines. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Mar 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 12:37
|
|
|
I don't know how many visual novels you've played but FFXIV doesn't resemble them in any way.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 12:39
|
|
|
Post- ARR story is such a loving slog. It's got all the stakes and excitement of prepping your apartment for a move, with all the reward of a level 10 quest in exp and gil. You don't even get neat gear to play dress up with, it's just loving recolored earrings, chokers, or rings.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 12:46
|
|
|
lines posted:I don't know how many visual novels you've played but FFXIV doesn't resemble them in any way. Long character driven story beats and scenes where I get a dialogue choice to try and influence whether I marry Y'shtola or Sadu? I kid, but... As much as I like FF14 I just went through 6.0 recently and I'd have 2-3 hour sessions where I mostly read dialogue or watched cutscenes. Even between the long spots where the literal apocalypse was happening and I had a good bit of fighting to do. It's the primary reason I take long breaks in the game. I have to actively put myself in the mood to read and enjoy a story when my first gaming to unwind instinct is "I could hop on Deep Rock and gun down bugs." FF14 writing is king of the genre and takes swings at others out of it. FF14 gameplay has to be prefaced with vets asking sprouts to be incredibly patient to get past ARR. And yes, FF14 catches up and stands tall once you get dungeons and trials and raids. Nobody ever told somebody getting into WoW that their class will start to form after the first 30 hours. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 12:54
|
|
|
Oh don't get me wrong - parts of the gameplay, especially in the early game, suck big rear end. And I love the game, I could never get into WoW! I think what I claim is that its method of storytelling is quite different from visual novels, though you can tell that Ishikawa has a history writing for that genre, certainly. I don't really play many action games, though - that probably shapes my perspective. I did talk to someone the other day who said that she misses 1.0 gameplay and that 2.0 and onwards is just too fast and frantic, which is wild to me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 13:12
|
|
|
Doomykins posted:WoW has had consistently good raid design for decades and while I hate to hand it to 'em they blow MSQ gameplay out of the water. Meh, at the end of the day it's pve either way.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 13:20
|
|
|
I'm probably using the definition wrong but I mean I see MSQ as reading a book with a bunch of fancy graphical stuff to physically explore and move through a world, but still the same headspace I'd be in to crack open a book. Hell, I still need to finish 6.x post-patch but I reach for the FPS when I think of gaming. WoW is really good about keeping things heavily gamified even by MMO quest design limitations, as well as during the leveling process. I'd like it if FF14 was a bit more aggressive in MSQ threat level.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 13:21
|
|
|
Without getting into spoilers, I think the solo-duties in EW were a step up and although easy, they were interesting because of the narrative they weaved while still making them fun to play through and being a bit more representative of the sort of raid content that is the bread and butter of FFXIV. Personally I wouldn't mind slightly more difficult content, but there have been people that were put off EW because some of the trials within it were too difficult, so I can see why the challenge within the MSQ is kept quite low as a result.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 13:27
|
|
|
FFXIV has nearly as many New Player Experience problems as Destiny 2. Maybe a year ago I got a friend who had never played D2 to download and we partied up to run him thru the first few bits. All he kept saying is "I have no idea what's going on at all, so just tell me what to shoot", because it's SO much information at once. Sucks because it meant he missed out on what is a pretty interesting story because of how the game presents it. FFXIV also gives you a LOT all at once. Even playing the second time around (just killed Xenos), there are gigantic portions of things I completely forgot because just: too much information at once. I suppose once games are around for that long, and have years of lore built up, it's difficult to figure out how to drop someone who has never heard any of it into the game, because it's difficult to make it NOT feel like you are drinking from the firehose. The Smith's stuff you can do at the beginning to get that one ring should be expanded out to include some of the more common dungeon mechanics: Tank Busters, Stacks, Circle Markers, etc. Not really a new player problem, but - I think leveling Alt jobs should be different. If I was in charge, I think the XP boost for Alt Jobs should be greater, as long as they are under the level of your current MSQ, or under the level of your highest Job. Leveling an Alt job shouldn't feel as grindy as it does. Class Quests and Hunting logs should basically get me there just as fast as I got there when I was also doing MSQ. 1-35 or so goes pretty fast, then it slows down for 36-40, but holy poo poo does 41-50 suck so hard. That grind feels ENDLESS. Another problem I think about how I'd solve is jobs that start at like 50 are so clunky to try and level, because you hit roulette and get sync'd down to 16 for Sastasha, and have no idea what your buttons do at that point because you just got lvl 50's skills all at once, haven't learned THOSE yet, and now most of them are disabled anyway. It's weird. Maybe have a job available after 50, but the job itself starts lower so you can learn it as you go up, instead of "here are all your lvl 50 skills at once, but now let's take away a bunch because you sync'd down".
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 14:51
|
|
|
HaB posted:The Smith's stuff you can do at the beginning to get that one ring should be expanded out to include some of the more common dungeon mechanics: Tank Busters, Stacks, Circle Markers, etc. Singling this out because it's such an interesting topic to me. After they added the Hall of the Novice, people started asking the devs to add some sort of "Hall of the Intermediates" or something that would teach more advanced party mechanics like the ones you mentioned. The devs acknowledged that people wanted it, but never committed on adding anything to the game. I like what they've done instead, which is just to introduce those mechanics earlier through the recent ARR dungeon reworks. The reworks were primarily done in service to adding duty support NPCs, but it also allowed them to go back and give bosses markers that were developed waaaay later in the game. My two favorite examples are stack markers and tankbuster markers.
A key thing about these things coming in earlier is that they're a lot more forgiving as you're first seeing them. A DPS can take an ARR tankbuster raw if for whatever reason the tank dies, getting hit by ground telegraphs does negligible damage, and you don't need all four people in a stack marker if one or two people are frolicking out in the fields. It also just helps the information stick better than someone going into a training instance for 10 minutes and just being given a rundown of basic combat markers.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:13
|
|
|
Vitamean posted:A key thing about these things coming in earlier is that they're a lot more forgiving as you're first seeing them. A DPS can take an ARR tankbuster raw if for whatever reason the tank dies, getting hit by ground telegraphs does negligible damage, and you don't need all four people in a stack marker if one or two people are frolicking out in the fields. It also just helps the information stick better than someone going into a training instance for 10 minutes and just being given a rundown of basic combat markers. That seems like it's got its own problems, though. If a DPS can take an ARR tankbuster, then an actual tank would barely flinch- will the tank really learn what a "tankbuster" means that way? Or will it just be another incomprehensible graphical marker on the screen for a new MMO player? If a stack-up marker isn't that bad when people don't stack up, then what will force those players that were standing off in the middle of nowhere to learn what that stack marker means? Or if not enough people stack up and they die, then people might learn the lesson of "don't get near the guy with that marker" or (as we know happens) the person with the stack marker runs away to "save" other players. It'd be nice to have something in-game explain what the various markers mean, rather than hoping players will get curious and look it up.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:35
|
|
|
I agree that the reworked dungeons (especially Castrum and Praetorium) do a good job of being basically a midterm test on boss mechanics, but I think a little training system that can be quickly played and replayed might be nice. Ideally I think they ought to rebuild all of the Guildhests to be this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:44
|
|
|
The Guildhests are wildly out of date, but I think the core idea is great. I'd love to see some reworks where the individual Guildhests instances are "the one that teaches you about stack markers" or "the one that teaches you about meteors" or whatever
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:48
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:That seems like it's got its own problems, though. If a DPS can take an ARR tankbuster, then an actual tank would barely flinch- will the tank really learn what a "tankbuster" means that way? Or will it just be another incomprehensible graphical marker on the screen for a new MMO player? It's very likely that there's at least one veteran in an duty finder party that can clarify anything, though. Like, I dunno when the very first stack marker appears now (brayflox?) but if someone's too far they'd be able to bring up "hey, we want everyone in this". The tankbuster thing I think works because if a newbie healer is still getting used to their kit they don't want to feel like the party cascading into a wipe is solely their fault just because they didn't manage to prevent the tank from dying just before the boss queued up a tb. There is a ramp up, though, so I think if you keep making those same mistakes as a new player move further along into ARR's mandatory content they'll see the consequences of messing them up start to build.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
quiggy posted:The Guildhests are wildly out of date, but I think the core idea is great. I'd love to see some reworks where the individual Guildhests instances are "the one that teaches you about stack markers" or "the one that teaches you about meteors" or whatever Guildhests are so bizarre because they're definitely made with a different idea of what game the devs thought they were making at the time. Just a bunch of stuff like mob management or point defense that never comes up again. Part of me wants to see them reworked but also I want them to stick around as-is just to have this portal back to what the devs thought they were cooking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2024 15:56
|
|