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Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker


DisturbedSwan
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Started playing this a few nights ago thanks to a free 30 day code I received from a guy on another forum, always wanted to give it a go but didn't want to pay the money to take the plunge I suppose.

Decided on a Female Miqo'te (Seekers of the Sun) Lancer with the Oschon Guardian, I'm situated in Phoenix in the Chaos server, Level 8. No idea really if any of what I picked is any good.

The game put me into 'Grimaldia' which is a set of forest cities.

As for the game itself...still undecided really, very early days 4 hours into an MMO but I like a few things about it and dislike a few things about it really.

The world itself seems cool, the servers are stable and even though the graphics aren't upto 2015 standards really it looks alright, runs incredibly well at 1080/60 and I've been using the GamePad throughout without any major problems except I can't seem to find an option to invert the right analog stick which is annoying, but I've got used to playing in default now, despite it not feeling wholly natural.

The way they introduce you to the game is very good, you're definitely eased into it, in one little secluded area of the map (Grimaldia), everything is told to you simply and tutorial boxes pop up for pretty much everything, there is still a lot to take it but it doesn't feel like you're bewildered or bamboozled by information and the world itself like other MMOs I've played in the past.

Only really explored Grimaldia and its surrounding but it is pretty cool, the scenery is nice, the buildings have a lot of character to them and its cool seeing people potter about with Chocobo's in tow (how the fuck do I get one of them?!).

My main gripe though at the moment is the quests, they're all very fetch-questy and traditional MMO staples as 'kill 6 of this creature', 'deliver a message to this person', 'go round up these naughty people and tell them to come back' etc. the coolest one I've done was some woman that was being accosted by this bloke that was a criminal and asked me to meet with him on the edge of town instead of her to see what his deal is, every other quest has been incredibly forgettable and dull, I've played 4 hours and these quests just keep popping up and up and up, they don't seem to go away, but there's not really anything else to do so I keep on just doing them regardless.

I didn't understand why I couldn't complete some of the quests earlier, the little 'complete' box was not able to be clicked so I just left these quests uncompleted and went to do some others, tried again later into my session and realised if I pressed left or right on the d-pad I could select a quest reward, once selected the quest was able to be completed :lol: felt so stupid.

Another stupid moment I had was when I had to get Level 5 gear to do a quest, went to the shop, dropped a load of cash on a set of Level 5 stuff and then realised after that I could've got all of it from the quest rewards I was missing :lol: all that money wasted, oh well :oops:

Not sure about the Fate-public event quests either, it's a cool concept and when they work and loads of people come to one spot to batter some cunt its a nice spectacle but most just get in the way and are annoying really, only had people turn up in 1 or 2 out of all the ones I've attempted.

The combat is really cool though, I mean you can just sit back and just press 1 button here and there, it's not very involved on the face of it, but you feel involved in it which is the key thing, and it feels satisfying enough that when you defeat a tough-ish enemy you're slightly elated.

There's definitely something compelling about it though, it just feels like it could be a standard RPG at the moment, it doesn't feel bewildering at all really and I'm just pottering about doing quests, thinking about upgrading weapons, armour etc. like I would a regular RPG, I do hope the quests get better the further it goes on though as I think I'm out if it's another shit-ton of hours of these quests.

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Probably played another 4 hours of this sporadically over the last week or so, roughly 8 hours in total and I think I'm done with it really.

I do still occasionally have the urge to go back to it and put in another couple of hours late at night/early in the morning, but I haven't played it now for a good 3/4 days at a guess.

Things were progressing nicely level-wise the last few hours I played and I was upto Level 12 or 13, the game introduced the first Dungeon to me, and I've started getting a few story cutscenes, no idea who the characters are or if they're meant to be important or not (guessing they are), typically FF/JRPG weirdness to them, and the cutscenes themselves have nowhere near the polish of the main-line FF games, but it's cool there's a story in there that is featured at the forefront.

The quests though just killed it really, I did an absolutely ridiculous amount the past 4 hours and just kind of burnt out on them, no variation like I said in my previous post, and the same quest-types over and over, apparently things get better when you get upto Level 18 or so, but I just don't know if I can be bothered to do a ton more quests to get up to that level with the remaining time I've got left in the game, I didn't pay any money for it, so I don't feel any guilt for not playing it anymore or anything, I may go back to it for just an hour another day next week before my free subscription finishes but I'm sure it won't do enough to convince me to spend another £6.99 (or whatever it is) a month to continue playing.

It's a shame, because it does do a lot of things well, the world is rather charming and has a lot of character to it, the story-questline is handled well, the servers are buttery smooth, seeing other players all pottering about in the worlds going in shops, practising spells etc. is cool but the quests just have nowhere near the variation I require to keep me invested in an MMORPG like this, it's definitely the best MMO I've played though but seeing as the only other ones I've played were 30 minutes of FFXI and WoW I don't know if that's exactly the ringing endorsement it may be perceived to be.

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  • 2 years later...

I'm resubbed to this. After sort of burning out on it ages ago I'm not sure how long ill be back on but I needed a game which devours time cause I still ain't in a place where I feel like I can be productive and use my time more fruitfully. So XIV it is.

 

My main is a black mage usually, but I got bored of that after a while and purchased the level boost for dragoon to try the Stormblood content. I don't usually buy boosts, but I've raised something like 4 classes from 0-60 already and just wanted something that felt new without just doing dailies for a month.

 

I skipped Stormblood when it came out. Have been trying to get through it here and there but I feel the main story quests in this are a disappointment after how good Heavensward was (a better story than XV I would say). But that trailer for Shadowbringers has me excited so I got to get Ms Snausages ready for next year. Black Mage, white mage and Dragoon all up to 70 and I'll be practicing those rotations.

 

Just jumped on duty finder and fought Shiva as white mage. It's overwhelming when you haven't been on in a while. So much to keep track of.

 

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  • 5 months later...

After years of thinking about it I finally gave this game a try today and after a lot of faff trying to get the game going it’s actually really fun in a mindless kind of way. 

 

I started at 9:30am but didn’t really get going until about 12 because I had to download the game which took forever, then it took about 45 minutes for me to get a Square account and link it with the game, then I designed one character played a bit, hated the character I made so restarted. Then picked a different class and ended up in area I hated so restarted for a 2nd time, and finally went back to the first area with a character I like and got on with it.

 

The controls in this are wank because it’s trying to do so much overlay shit on a controller and I’m used to it now after about 3 hours but it really took getting used too. Also this game requires a lot of reading different tutorial boxes and the like but I skipped all of that so it was a lot of hitting buttons randomly until I Puzzled out how to keep the map on screen but make the quest log screen go away.

 

Also the game has next to no voice acting so it’s just a bunch of the most inane shit and it took me about 45 minutes before I was like “Okay” and muted the game, stopped reading, put on a podcast, mashed X on every NPC and just kept following the exclamation marks. 

 

I’m now level 9, just beat a tree, got a crystal, watched a muted cutscene, and I don’t know what is happening which is my fault but at just...this game is not interested in gradually educating you about the world at all it’s just like boom here is our fake history, terminology and world - go!

 

And that’s why it’s been mindless because I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing but the game is very satisfying to play. I decided to go with the archer class because I guess I’m learning I like bow and arrow classes in RPGs? 

 

Anyway, a grand total of 6 hours of this today I’ve definitely had my fill, but I will almost certainly come to it because it’s fun. Still a lot to learn, still a lot to do, but so far it’s almost exactly lik I thought it would be but just much better. 

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It takes a very long time to get to the really good stuff. It's worth it though if you don't mind being hopelessly addicted to awesome games.

 

The raids and primal fights are a ton of fun with great callbacks. Don't watch that fight I posted up above last year because it's very cool the first time you see

 

Eventually you'll get to swap classes. It's good to mess around with different roles as it provides a larger holistic understanding of how to play your main role. Like taking unnecesary damage as a dps to keep your damage up isn't worth it if you're causing a nuisance for the healer and so on. The community is helpful tho about these things.

 

The controller scheme stuff is good I think. When you get way more skills later in its good to subdivide it out a bit. Like my healer has damage mapped to one trigger and healing to another for example. It's a really clever system I think, reminds me of DmC.

 

Realm Reborn's story is pretty boring but I really liked Heavensward.

 

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I don’t mind the controls for the the direct playing part of the game but you have to hit the touch pad to move between the map, the chat, the minimap, the quest list, and anytime it puts a green tutorial box on screen, all the while there is still some control over the character. So in the beginning I could not work out how to get to the quest log, open it, show me where it was on the map, close the quest quest log but leave the map up. It was quite annoying because you’re essentially flipping between different overlays with the touch pad but they’re all on the screen at once so figuring that out while refusing to read anything was difficult. But I got there in the end. 

 

Also so there are times when I set the map up and where I want to go but it’s in a different zone so I have to spend a good minute messing with the map and working out how I’m going to reach the quest marker, and when I get running sometimes the left stick still in the map and it’s moved it way off where I set it up.

 

Stuff like this is annoying but learnable. It’s just awkward. But the direct controls of the game are simple enough and setting hot keys and stuff. 

 

I don’t understand the auto attack or why you would ever need it because the cool down timers are so fast. I guess maybe if you get more powerful abilities later with longer cooldowns then auto attack would make sense but right now it has 0 use

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Auto attack still triggers while using your other abilities. So while you're cycling cooldowns, you're still doing base auto attack damage. 

 

I was just talking to @RikSP about this the other day and he asked if I'd go back, I said no unless we could get a solid group to fill roles and dungeons without involving randoms so if we get there give me a shout and I can resub and tank. 

 

Once you get to everything that was added after the base game, the story really starts to pick up and I was fully invested in it by the time I got to Heavensward which is great I'm general.

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I have never used auto attack. The global cool down for skills always means you have something to use

 

I realise MMOs are mindless rubbish when you start off but you'd be surprised how mechanical it can get. When you play your role well in a group and you get that synergy going it feels great.

 

One time I had to solo as a healer for a raid boss cause the other one fell off a cliff thing. Everyone thanked me at the end ?

 

If you do get proper into the game it's a good idea to buy a cheap wireless keyboard, just to send quick messages in groups

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  • 1 month later...

Back playing this again, did the Susano primal on the Stormblood DLC. Kind of cool and reminded me of Ravana in Heavensward.

 

When I think of game of the gen listings I usually think of botw and Bloodborne,  but I think xiv tops both of them for game I loved most. But Stormblood fucking sucks. I'm only slogging through it because people are saying great things about the new Shadowbringers expansion. Hopefully it picks up.

 

They've also plucked some more skills off of classes I used to play. Cleric stance isn't even a thing anymore and TP is gone too. Nothing major but the early game must be kind of boring with it having fewer mechanics now.

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Just did this, the Alexander raid. This is my first attempt (well its actually my second, but I did so bad on the first one and completely failed on mechanics that I wanted a second run).

 

 

Not a display of skill or anything (I suck at it) and it's old content but I thought it was a really cool bit of fan service. Ffxiv is like a greatest hits album for the series.

 

 

FFVIII raid

 

Check it out @Nag

 

(Why did it work that time???)

 

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Over the hump with Stormblood now. I think the first half of the expansion is just super poorly paced with lots of different factions getting introduced all the time. By level 65 it gets back into gear.

 

Ended up buying a summoner level boost to try the job out. It's got a really busy rotation and you have to manage a lot of resources to keep DPS up, as well as a pet. It's much more technical than Black Mage, way less waiting for cool downs and cast time.

 

Also bought the Shadowbringers expansion. Hype is really high for this so I'm excited for a return to form.

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It's ok, I didn't really need my last arm anyway

 

I try a bit of tanking now and then to understand class mechanics a bit better, but a lot of the ARR content is too nerfed now to really learn anything. But anyway, what I wanted to say is I was playing as Warrior in an early dungeon and this impatient DPS guy was pulling everything and trying to set the pace. Which is whatever, the content is pretty easy. But then he pulls 12 mobs to me and I get aggro but he dies cause the healer can't keep up and my dmg mitigation options arent all there yet at low levels so we wipe

 

So the dungeon takes longer cause of this goober lol. I don't care how good you are unless you're trying to hold down enochan as BLM or something if you're a DPS you should sit down and shut up and follow. Don't care how slow you think I am. ?

 

I much prefer healing I think. You still need a lot of awareness of mechanics and aggro and being helpful but without being the "boss" leading everyone around

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  • DisturbedSwan changed the title to Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker

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