Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV)

Picked this up free on PSN, cant play until Squeenix remind me of my ID

one armed dwarf wrote: »

Patch day Tuesday

I had to RMA my GPU... stuck on PS4 for the time being Need to fix up my HUD before Tuesday so I can actually see wtf on the 24 main raid cause I am a healy boi.

I've been levelling BLM recently. I think it's the only class which solves my issue with this game (and any MMO) where attacks can actually have a sense of impact, it's also a class which has a half decent rotation at levels 60 and 70 (braindead up to level 50 but it always was)

Just a very cool feeling of power weaving in ley lines after transition to fire from ice and spamming huge explosions at things.

At 80 BLM is a dream to play.

Lucky Jack wrote: »

(2) As everyone knows, retail WoW's story is all over the place by now, though I know some of the Shadowlands changes have made it easier to experience it expansion-by-expansion again. Still, even in WoW Classic there are some story events - like the AQ War Effort - which are lost to me now that the events have finished (unless they release fresh servers in tandem or in the wake of TBC, which I doubt). Is there anything similar in FFXIV? I know the story still gets a lot of praise, with the ARR stuff being a bit of a drag initially, but are there any major story elements that I'll NEVER see due to starting this late?

Thanks in advance for all advice. If anyone has any useful resources or links, like FFXIV's answer to Wowhead, they'd be very welcome too.

So, I'm far from an expert, like you I started (very) late and I'm only mid way through Heavensward so a fair bit off level cap. Like you though,

I haven't seen any story events that are completely impossible to do now, but there are a few bits that end up a little underwhelming because of how they work out. Specifically there are two 8 man dungeons that are the last two parts of the 1.0 content and are mandatory parts of the Main Story Quest. There are a couple of things that are done well, for a start, if it's your first time in any dungeon, everybody else will get an xp boost. This means that people levelling alt jobs are generally more than happy to have you around and if you let them know you are new, they'll usually take that into account. There's also a bunch of story cutscenes in those 2 dungeons, previously these were skippable on an individual level, but they're mandatory now, to stop those levelling alts from leaving anyone who actually wants to experience the story behind. The big issue with those 2 dungeons though is that the gear level that higher level characters get synced down to is waaay too high. This means that you'll basically find yourself hanging on as you are being speedrun from cutscene to cutscene, which definitely takes away from their intended use as the 'grand climax' of the 1.0 story.

Thankfully that only appears in 1.0, there don't seem to be any 8 man mandatory story instances, though I think the Crystal Tower raids are a prerequisite of the 5.3 content, so do those at level 50 if you can.

Stuff I've found useful so far are:

Wiki: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki
Zepla HQ - bunch of beginner friendly content & guides: https://www.youtube.com/c/ZeplaHQ/videos
MTQcapture - dungeon guides: https://www.youtube.com/c/MTQcapture/videos
FFXIVGuild - Crafting/gathering guides: https://ffxivguild.com/

[edit] I should add, so far I've found the community to be pretty great for an MMO. Generally the first thing you should do in any dungeon is tell people that it's your first time there. They'll then take that into account and quite often guide you through any bits of fights etc. that you'll need to know. Yeah, there predictably is a tiny weeb/furry/'Erotic RolePlay' community element which is a bit weird, but they usually stay out of the way and are easy enough to ignore.

I would guess that when 7.0 happens (endwalker is 6.0) that they will be given the choice of starting from Realm Reborn or 7.0

I think the game badly needs to rethink how it onboards players for its story anyway. My biggest request for 7.0 is a level squish down to 60 or something and a game rebalance to adjust for it. Doing ARR/HW and even Stormblood content is pretty boring with the synced rotations.

one armed dwarf wrote: »

PC got a bit of a performance uplift, loading wise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9rsB7meI70

It's because the removed the artificial limiter with the implimentation of the PS5 which has a SSD in it. PC was long capable of doing this but until now they had a limiter in place so PS4 players weren't overshadowed.

Any Irish Free Companies?

Things are a little nuts atm as wow's 9.1 is DoA. Between the bad content and the whole Sylvie debacle (wows youtube team hid the 9.1 raid ending video as its been downvoted 4 to 1) its gone and pushed people into giving XIV a go. Hell Asmongold one of WoWs biggest livestreamers started FFXIV and they're all enjoying it with him along with other big names in that area and to top it off SE is running a free play trial up to lvl60 and unlimited access to ARR and Heavensward along with a 14 day welcome back campaign. Because of all these happening at the same time what should be the quietest time for the game during its pre expansion phase is actually incredibly busy instead with Steam players hitting the highest ever concurrent player numbers and multiple servers nearly locked out for character creation due to high numbers of people playing. Hell the last LL said Endwalker preorders were 2 to 3 times higher than Shadowbringers preorders. Just wait till Endwalker in November its going to be absolutely insane. They had plans for server upgrades too so hopefully they'll get prioritised.

So i finally decided to jump back into FFXIV. Purchased Shadowbringers last night as i didnt want to wait for Endwalker as i wouldnt get access to that expansion until November. I had returned and installed the game back in 2019 after leaving not long after Heavensward came out. Played for a few weeks trying to progress on with the story and some of my classes with Stormblood, got the MSQ and 2 classes up to 70 but ultimately left again as i didnt really have anyone to play with and got bored.

Had been around since FFXIV 1.0 and ARR when it launched and I found it hard to return to the game after being away for so many years. All of my hotbars were completely broken, classes had changed, abilities were gone etc. My friendlist is completely gone and it seems most people stick to themselves or already in a FC so think im gonna have that same issue this time around. Outside of randomly going to FATES or que for Dungeons and Dailys not sure what i should be doing.

PLD and SCH are both currently 70, lots of others are 50 from doing them before. I want to focus on a DPS so iv jumped into RDM and trying to get used to the rotation. Im currently on Diablos but not against changing server if there is a group from here playing together or getting on during Irish Prime time etc as i think thats whats needed really day to day.

RopeDrink you seem to know the most about the game lately. You currently in an End Game FC and sticking to that content or you playing with others here or anything?

Also thinking of jumping back in, I am not going to lie and say the allegations going around on blizzard are stopping me. While terrible if i stopped playing games due to the unethical behavior of company management id play nothing. However you can see that the toxicity has leaked into the game and there was an air of hubris from the dev team that no matter what they put out people would stay subbed.

The realization is that the game is in a terrible state and that combined with the likelihood of shadow-lands being dead and on life support until what ever the next expansion is has meant that its very easy to just drop it and move one. I think that is a major reason why most content developers are moving on.

Like Ropedrink the one thing keeping me in the game was M+ and i don't think thats enough anymore. May as well give this a proper go and finish leveling my char ARR is a slog :(.

Cool will try adding you guys, need to be online at the same time.

Sorry late seeing this, havnt seen an invite or anything sorry if i havent overlapped. Ye ill PM You discord details now cheers.

Indeed we just lost one of our raids main healers in wow, her partner put it like this. Why play WoW and be forced to run content when she can do what she wants when she wants in FF14.

Have you finished up the MSQ for EW Rope?