Jump to content
passwords have all been force reset. please recover password to reset ×
MFGamers

Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker


DisturbedSwan
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • 1 month later...

I don't have anything to say about the game itself as I'm kinda sick of it, in fact I told my fc last night not to expect to see me online for months (if at all). But I thought this was interesting enough to comment on. FFXIV is going through a huge and unprecedented surge in subscription numbers. Like it's actually hard to login to the game. That's in spite of a very large content drought and it being the end of a raid tier with the next expansion delayed until November.

 

It's all because of one dude, Asmongold. A WoW streamer who started playing XIV who single-handedly took down some servers when he started playing. I've not heard of something like that before where a streamer has such celeb status to cause something like that. It's got to the point you can't actually buy a digital copy of the game, it has 'sold out'. Whether that means the random key generator hits its mathematical limit or that the game is just under too much stress it's kind of an incredible phenomenon even if you have no interest in these games at all

 

https://kotaku.com/wow-disappointment-plus-twitch-start-mass-exodus-into-1847283978

 

Also while I've never been a fan of asmongold it's actually fun to watch his streams of this cause he's way into even the most boring parts of the game. At the very least it's very good marketting for XIV though it apparently is also due to WoW apparently having a very shit patch just recently

 

As for me I'm just worn down by the intensity of people on this game, especially those who use it as an extension to their real life. So much drama and friction all the time, I really just want something more trivial out of video games than all that real life stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I finally took the plunge on this last night, I have a few friends that play this LOADS and another friend took the plunge so we're learning it together. Despite there being a load to take in, and a control scheme which was glitched on mine (the x button wouldn't select anything) which led me to using a weird mouse/keyboard/controller combo until I figured out how to tweak the settings, i'm really enjoying it.

I'm now part of a really established FC with loads of super friendly and helpful people. Hit level 12 last night and got to the first crystal. 

The amount of content in this is quite bewildering and I can see how people get hooked. Can't wait to jump back in this evening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Endwalker preview stuff, I will edit this post as I go through stuff cause there's a lot and I think I'm the only one here who cares lol

 

Damiani is a healer main like me, but mains White Mage (I'm scholar). Scholar is in a really shit place with the new changes, technically better than Shadowbringers but the team don't seem that bothered to address the cruft of the class or restore some of the cooler aspects of previous versions which makes me really sad

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not recommend this game*

 

But as MMOs go the controller stuff is fine I think, I don't think it's much better on keyboard. One thing I'll say is all my dmc playing makes it easy for me to iterate through the party list and heal people on a controller (claw grip)

 

Main thing is the pace of combat in XIV is slow even by MMO standards as it's balanced around controller players

 

*to be clear, I do recommend this game but I've fallen way off it due to constant drama in my fc and how every time I log in it feels more like Coronation Street than Final Fantasy 

 

Let's see what they did to my boi

 

 

More interesting perhaps is the completely new healer 'Sage', which I will level but probably not main as everyone is gonna be playing this class

 

 

 

 

It uses stances to change healing and DPS properties and it's damage skills heal and provide mitigation. The healing buffs in general seem to be trying to reduce need for direct healing either via GCD or OGCD.

 

This is a sentence that virtually nobody here will understand lol.

 

If they are going in this direction with healing though I wish they would add more damage skills then. I actually like the passive healing emphasis FFXIV's meta has, but if you're not healing then why is our DPS so boring

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

FFXIV Endwalker got delayed by two weeks. I booked that time off, I guess I can unbook it off. Or do something else, I don't really like this game much anymore.

 

A 2 week delay seems kind of messy though, gives me Cyberpunk vibes. Wonder how hot it's coming in.

 

At least now I can play the KoF beta

 

edit launch trailer

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

 FFXIV is out today, apparently it is the most difficult launch ever and nobody can get on cause of how popular it suddenly got. They apparently decided they needed to perform a infrastructure upgrade to handle the huge inflow of new users, but did not manage to do it for launch. So people are getting a '2002' error which is basically 'we cant fit you in'. I just checked and I'm position 3482 in the queue

 

Good thing I didn't book today off. But wait, I'm wfh.... 👀

 

For real though if it's as bad as this I'm just going to try and login straightaway and keep it on during work, twiddling the stick every 20 minutes to prevent AFK logout

 

Why's a decade old kinda getting stale MMO suddenly so massive? Good question. When I get on later I'm gonna check out the new summoner and try to get sage levelled up to Endwalker levels. It's the least hyped I've been for an expansion but it's the 'Avengers Infinity War & Endgame' of FFXIV, the 'ending'.

 

Last thing I did was change back from lalafell to a normal person, so the cutscenes dont look too weird  

 

Anyway, our new title screen

 

image.png

 

edit and back into the swing of thingsimage.png

 

with the new Sage healer. 'Healer'

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

I grinded this game out fairly severely today, Im level 83 of which the current expansion range is 80-90, so just above the 1/5 mark in terms of story progress Id guess. Or a bit more above that. 

 

XIV is very fetch quest heavy but this is the most gameplay free story expansion yet I think? Its basically a really slow and occasionally plodding movie game. Some parts are pretty good, others arent. The part I just completed now is extremely good and dramatic, involving the good old Empire that you have to have in each of these Final Fantasy games. 

But because its mostly story stuff I cant say much really. Its very much a resolve the story sort of expansion. Lots of extremely long cutscenes with characters expositing the rounding off of their character arcs.

 

Lots of hey, remember this character from 6 years ago, we brought him back to have a slight role in whats probably the last youll see of a lot him. But we needed a way to send him off (probably, Im not near the end yet). Its fine but its status as the last chapter has given it some real stodgy pacing I think cause it has to hit all the things on the way out. But the lack of gameplay was so significant I think I was level 82 on new summoner (the class got redesigned) before they threw me into a fight and I didnt know what its new buttons did at all. The only gameplay Im really getting is levelling the new healer.

 

I have played a lot of Sage now and can see its a class thats designed to teach people more about what optimal healing looks like, cause its whole design is based around lessening damage with certain heals and abilities rather than being reactive. Which Scholar also does a bit, but Sages heals are even weaker and theres no real good burst heals. Its all about management of cooldowns and damage mitigation. It doesnt really reinvent the wheel but I think thats why they designed the class, to get people better at knowing what a wheel is in the context of healing. I like that its heals feel weak too cause I like the busy feeling of having to flip through a bunch of other defensive options first.

 

All that said although I havent personally being hit by it too much this launch has gone extremely badly. More than usual for an MMO, my FC discord is full of people posting things like i am position 7777 in the queue, wish me luck (posted 4pm). Then hey guys, finally online (posted 9pm in game). Then 20 minutes later person X disconnected. Oh shit guys I got dc-ed now I cant play the game at all today. Or people spending 3 hours in a queue, it errors out and the game crashes and the queue starts all over again

 

One reason for the 2 week delay was anticipation of this kind of thing. The game has never been this popular, ever. It hit its peak popularity right in the middle of a massive content drought during a period when raids were being delayed and/or cancelled, no big story stuff was happening. Yet huge numbers, then the finale expansion came out. Its a perfect storm of a few things. Asmongold and other famous streamers started playing. Were in a pandemic, and covid has fucked the semiconductor supply chain but also left people with lots of time. WoW is in a really bad place, the worst place its ever been and so is its company. Also the fact that its the finale of FFXIV (or sort of anyway, its like Avengers Endgame I said. They will make more expansions but this is still the finale).

 

One other side effect tho of its popularity is the huge volume of new players who suck at the game, which makes playing as healer more fun. no, really. It gives me more to do and feels kinda nostalgic that the collective skill level and knowledge of the community of this game dropped a significant level over the past few months. You need some stupid in a game like this cause bad PUGs in casual content are hilarious. Anyway I hear the first trial in this game is pretty lit. So I really want to grind the hell out of Sage and get them to the level that they can do the trial blind. Blind healing a boss fight in an MMO is a lot of fun. Its clutch in a way that can only be experienced once

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Level 88 in Endwalker, which puts me in the final stretch of the story. But cause of how XP scales in this it would take me an entire day to get through that final stretch I think. Also there's a storm tomorrow, so might not wrap it up tomorrow at all (kinda sucks, I booked this time off specifically to get EW wrapped up).

 

Anyway, being an MMO I'm not sure where and when the reviews will come out. But I find Endwalker a tedious drag. Best way I can explain it without getting into spoilers, tho I'm not sure anyone reads this but whatever. I said this was like Avengers, what I meant by that mostly it's a very long running story of installments that builds itself up with lots of sidestories until you've got this big cast of characters and lore, and you pay off stories from years ago in splendid fashion. Despite how formulaic those movies are they seem to work on some level with their audience at providing that. Actually, the way I look at it is that MCU is like FFXIV. FFXIV is also extremely good at this, a lot of its narrative impact comes from the history you share with these characters from following them for so long. A side story in 2015's Heavensward was the seed that sprouted 2019's Shadowbringers, the most popular expansion. Murmurs of revolt in 2013's Realm Reborn set into motion the entire 2017 Stormblood expansion. This year's Endwalker then follows on from both Stormblood and Shadowbringers, and tries to put a cap onto all these stories.

 

Unfortunately my MCU metaphor doesn't end here, cause Endwalker also reminds me of Endgame in that there's very little momentum in its story and its characters in both cases are concerned with solving a very big existential 'problem'. In Endgame it's time travel. In Endwalker it's (these are massive ffxiv spoilers)

Spoiler

how to escape the end of the world, the 'Final Days', and the pros and cons of building an Ark to escape the solar system in a moon piloted by an army of Peter Rabbits or using said Ark to kill a little nihilist girl on the edge of the galaxy who you didn't know exist until this expansion and is the source of all the universe's woe for reasons just learned

 

But what it ends up being is a bunch of scenes of characters reacting to events set in motion, it's very 'passive' (im talking about ffxiv here, not interested in litigating Endgame's cinematic merits beyond just drawing that one point of comparison). It lacks the pathos of Heavensward's story about a kingdom's ancient feud with dragons. It lacks the surreally dark fantasy landscape of 'the first', the world in Shadowbringers which is overrun by light

 

It lacks something akin to the tragedy of Emet Selch from Shadowbringers (who's indisputably the best antagonist FF has ever had). It lacks.. actually Stormblood sucks, at least Endwalker is better than that. But it's lacking is the main thing, it has no real throughline beyond being a finale to wrap things up

 

There's still hardly any gameplay either. It's just a bunch of fetch quests and tailing missions. There were a few ok dungeons, and one genuinely great and surprising boss fight that is the standout moment of the entire expansion so far. But eh, it's not enough. they also ruined summoner

 

Screenshot of the best moment of tonight's session, ended up reading chat instead of concentrating on the dry proceedings during a cutscene.

 

image.png

 

The boss fight, which is massive gigaton spoilers for the whole story, it's this one. It was fun and super spicy. The healer I play with keeps negging my ability to tell clockwise from counter clockwise, well I'm very old it happens we get bad at noticing easy patterns

 

Spoiler

 

 

It could turn around, but there's not a lot left of quests left at this point (like, still a full day of grinding, but still). Lots of people online are really loving Endwalker, so I might be an outlier. But to be honest, I've felt that before about things like MGSV and Red Dead Redemption 2 and after a while I find lots of people sharing the same view as me. So I wonder where things will fall with EW, and how it will all end

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Final Fantasy XIV is beaten, I am Iron Man

 

ffxiv_08122021_014323_844.png

 

Yea ok, the ending was good. I cried, then I healed the last boss and felt like a superhero 😭

 

(all gigaton spoilers)

 

That fucking transition, how was I supposed to heal? Thankfully the mechanics were easy as shit, they just want you to feel the anime hype

Spoiler

 

 

Dunno what they do with the story now. Figure it'll take a while to build momentum up.

 

I found my screenshots folder finally, ffxiv saves them in a weird place

 

Spoiler

ffxiv_08122021_001010_259.png

 

ffxiv_05122021_170713_127.pngffxiv_05122021_133628_754.png

 

 

So it saved it a bit at the end, but damn man was it slow.

 

Square are stomping down on music uploads, which sucks. Fuck them, but these are good

 

 

Spoiler

 

🎸 😢

 

 

 

Leitmotifs from across the entire run of expansions in this track, 10 years of music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reviews starting to come in (it's an MMO, reviews take a while)

 

 

https://screenrant.com/final-fantasy-xiv-endwalker-ffxiv-review/

https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-final-fantasy-xiv-endwalker/

https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-14-endwalker-review/

 

https://opencritic.com/game/11626/final-fantasy-xiv-endwalker

 

 

Best reviewed game of the year. So far anyway, but this is sort of like heroin junkies reviewing heroin, they are hardly going to be negative. Hopefully one of you fantasy critics nerds had this on your list.

 

I beat an extreme trial, it was pog. A bit easy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

FFXIV is going back on sale Jan 25

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/regarding-the-expansion-of-ffxivs-operations-oceanic-data-center-live-jan-25th-5-worlds-na-eu-expansions-happening-in-2-phases.539327/

 

They are also expanding data centers across regions over time

 

Right now I'm on floor 2 of my savage raid prog. There's one guy I play with who I heal with all the time, but he's on there every single night and no way I can do that. Savage feels like a 2nd job. Gets pretty stressful after a while. Hopefully I can beat the 2nd floor this weekend tho and move onto part 3, where the real shit starts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I guess this isn't ffxiv related, but xiv impressions are kinda whatever. This is something that's been doing the rounds on the ffxiv community, she's probably the biggest ffxiv content creator (at least who streams xiv regularly) and is living in Ukraine talking about contingency plans to escape should the situation escalate. It's pretty fucked up and scary.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

The free trial is back tomorrow (gives you Realm Reborn and Heavensward, the first exp), and Square talked about their plans for the future

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-02-21-final-fantasy-14-expands-support-for-solo-players

 

Pretty limited plans, just more single player options and better visuals. But same old game. Interestingly the single-player-ification of Realm Reborn is actually coming really soon, in the next patch (April). Then they will follow up with the rest of the expansions throughout the patch cycle into the next expansion

 

You'll still have to group up for 8 player content and 24 player.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...