FFXIV

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Initially, they were gonna give Hildibrand a break during Heavensward and just do the Scholasticate story, which features one character from Hildibrand. But, as expected, players really really just wanted more Hildibrand, so the Scholasticate stuff got quietly pushed aside for more shenanigans, which probably plays into why there weren't specific trials for it as they weren't originally planned as part of the 3.X roadmap.

Anyway got my glamour set picked out for Red Mage, which is ultimately what matters since we know glamours are the true endgame.

[Positive Touch]

buh? how were you able to test out new outfits?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

None of that is new, It's level 1-50 caster equippable gear already in the game. 

[Positive Touch]

ermmmmm...... as a blm, i already knew that. i uh was just testing you or something

[Bebpo]

I had the worst experience with a tank the other day in the 3.4 Ixali dungeon. Dude had a beginner's leaf on, I don't even know how that's possible all the way at 3.4, but anyhow he would never stop moving. Not like large pulls, but like when surrounded by enemies he'd keep running round the room never staying still. So as a NIN everytime I put my AoE DoT on the floor he'd run out of it and away and eventually I gave up and just kept doing AoE explosions.

Also another time I had a tank who never said a word and didn't stop at boss entry points to say anything and just ran and pulled the boss right away. I think this was the upside-down library dungeon. So I just winged it and tried to learn patterns/stay alive on the fly since it was my first time (and I'd said as much) there.

[Bebpo]

If anyone here plays Monster Hunter, I've never played MH, couldn't get into the stiff controls in the first one, but watching the E3 videos for XX and MHW after having played FFXIV...is MH basically an MMO quest game and the dinosaur battles are like FFXIV trials? That's sorta what the series looks like.

[Bebpo]

Did Thordan EX, that was fun. I like how HW 3.X focuses on mechanics that weren't used in 2.X much outside of Coil like lots of stacking defense. There were parts in Thordan Ex where the team had to just run together to continually group absorb the damage which was fun. Good fight, waaaaaaaay better than the normal version

[Positive Touch]

wait what? you beat it in one go?

[Bebpo]

No, we had 4 (maybe 5) wipes and we beat it with 10% echo. I played it with the GAF FC and didn't know the mechanics (neither did one of the other DPS and one of the tanks was first time and looked it up beforehand).

[Positive Touch]

still, that's impressive. it's not any easy fight.

[Bebpo]

Patch notes are SO COOL

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/de4bffc4fb40b355db2cb463273acab6f10e26ac

They're basically fixing, QoL every issue I have with the game outside of Fates still being useless once you hit lvl cap and not enough stuff to do in an area. Eventually I think they will fix Fates by having them give lore and will add new gameplay systems of things to do in areas to make certain sections less empty.

On pluses:

+Adding the equivelent of flying speed in ARR maps with quests and stuff like Aetheryte Shards to unlock. Hopefully lvl.2 running speed = flying speed.
+Being able to see enemy actions on the side enemy bar. This is really helpful when I'm killing adds so I don't have to cycle to the boss to see if they're doing some move I need to react to.
+Raid finder is cool
+NO LEVEL SYNC FOR GIANT CRAB FATES; wow, will actually be able to do some of these now even without a Fate party
+UI improvements
+Getting rid of attributes/second class requirements for jobs
+Can see the entire map for ARR areas like all of Shroud and any active markers
+Extra inventory space/armory space is nice
+bunch of other stuff

negatives:

-Death penalty is gonna be rough for high-end raids/extreme bosses. Weaknesses is up from -15% all stats to -25% all DPS which will be very rough for DPS checks or just doing damage if people are dying a lot (Odin fate lol)

Generally my impression is that they're buffing everything and making the game easier, faster and more accessible, but making the high end stuff slightly harder to balance it. I get the feeling going forward it'll basically be making the MSQ easier and easier for all players and extreme/raids tough as nails for hardcore content. Although the Nidhogg fight in 3.3 was no joke for an MSQ boss. Gotta imagine some casual players would get stuck there.

[Positive Touch]

this game is having a cross-promotion with honey buns, so now me and my character can both get fat off the same snacks. this game is amazing

[Bebpo]

Kinda surprised it's so quiet in this thread with SB out in less than 12 hours and like 20 pages of changes to the game in the patch notes. Gaf thread has like 30 pages already!

Maybe this is just a bigger deal to me because it's my first MMO launch event!! And the rest of you all are like  disconnects, glitches and other problems incoming.

[Valkyrie]

Probably because we're the only ones who play this game. I took a break because I'm not quite sure what to do with my region situation. Not sure if it's worth continuing on this account, plus I've been busy with other things.

Wish I had kept playing my first character so I could've played SB when it's out.

[Positive Touch]

i've been refreshing the game over and over all day to see if magically it'll be up early.

i read the patch notes and a lot of the stuff looks real good to me. lots of good quality of life improvements and adjustments (no more stat bonus points!) and ofc i'm excited about the new maps and story. i haven't paid much attention to class changes because tbh i don't care much. i'll learn the changes and new moves and i'll continue to kill shit with them. the fanbase (and every fanbase for an online game) freaks out over the tiniest changes and it's annoying to see because it's not like you really ever see a dev break the fucking game because of a damage adjustment or something. your character plays slightly different now; learn it and help your team. the end.

anyways, work ended up being cancelled today and i reallllly wish it coulda been tomorrow because i am fully ready to be a shut-in again

[Bebpo]

anyways, work ended up being cancelled today and i reallllly wish it coulda been tomorrow because i am fully ready to be a shut-in again

Yeah, I feel ya. I've already started figuring out how much work I really need to get done tomorrow and if there's anyway I can cut out early at like 2-3pm. I have mostly a free weekend, but Sunday's father's day so gonna bake some goodies and make time for family for about half that day. I've have some minor internal surgery procedure on Tuesday, so I'm gonna enjoy as much SB as I can before then and hope I don't die so I can keep playing

Probably because we're the only ones who play this game. I took a break because I'm not quite sure what to do with my region situation. Not sure if it's worth continuing on this account, plus I've been busy with other things.

Wish I had kept playing my first character so I could've played SB when it's out.

Well, worst case you've got 2 years until the next expansion launch and the quality of life improvements will make catching up a lot more fun/quick. Also if you don't care about the story, now you can even buy skip potions and be at SB lvl.60 tomorrow in an instant.

[Positive Touch]

woke up early and still only had time to watch the cg video :/

[Bebpo]

Woke up early and played before work and omg so good!!!

The engine seems much smoother. The first thing I noticed is when you talk to NPCs there's like a half-second delay for their speech bubble usually, but now it's instant. Cutscenes feel smoother/higher framerate. NIN's Kassatsu used to lag when refreshing the cooldowns of the ninja magic but now it's totally instant. Everything just feels really smooth. Not sure if this is just because not a lot of people online early on a Fri morning in NA, more servers because SB launch, or dropping the PS3 and engine optimizations, but it's running fantastic.

The new area is great and it's SO AWESOME being there at the start. People everywhere and every fate early on has like a hundred people on it like this:





I've never seen fates like this in all my 440 hours of ARR & HW. I can't even see the enemy or what's going on

Tons and tons of people running through the map alongside you, tons of people doing fates, so much yelling/shouting chatter on the box. Feels like a community thing which is something I've never experienced because everyone left HW by the time I started last November. It's really cool!

Also I tossed up the drops I was getting from enemies on the MB and they're selling really good right now for the crafters Like 2-3k per skin. Will help me make some money.

First merchants sell i255 NQ gear. Which is good because I was i242 so it's just around where I am. The only problem is my Fisher is lvl.60 from GC turn-ins but I haven't upgraded his gear since lvl.50 and Merchant tools start at lvl.62. So if I wanna start fishing in SB areas I'm gonna need to buy lvl.60 fishing gear off MB and a full set is probably gonna be pricey so idk if I want to spend that kind of gil or just keep doing GC turn-ins until lvl.62 and outfit Fisher with a cheap merchant gear set.

Role actions are kinda good/bad. I thought you get to choose a role, but I couldn't see a way. With the default role action for melee DPS I gain some useful skills I never had like 20 second HP absorb and North star removing directional requirements meaning I can trick attack in front if needed. BUT I lost Internal Release which sucks because NIN should be all about those big crits NIN also lost B4B, but since I never had it I guess it just brings everyone down to my level   Oh well, I will live. The new gauge stuff is ok but for NIN it's just a bigger icon than we had before so no big deal.

[Positive Touch]

woke up early and still only had time to watch the cg video :/

finally get home, turn on the ps4.... get an error while booting up, restart, and am greeted by a 22gb download in the installer.

 I'm going to take a nap

[Bebpo]

Yeah, couple of issues right now. First being disconnects and second being a solo instance bottleneck preventing people from progressing in the MSQ. I'm probably like 60 mins+ in and haven't got to it yet though and you get at least two full map areas to play with beforehand so there's stuff to do. Mostly been stopping at every fate I see and killing normal mobs along the way for drops that I can sell.

[Positive Touch]

four hours later and i finally get in! just got to the second map and so far i'm really excited! i like to take my time when i'm going through the story, do every sidequest, explore every little corner, so it's gonna take me awhile before i finish the whole expansion.

initial impressions:
-omg reconfiguring the whole hud just because dialog boxes are EVEN SMALLER now is annoying. you wanna talk about a qol upgrade? let the fucking dialog box size be adjustable in the hud menu
-music is fantastic so far and soken is the best composer the series has had after uematsu
-graphics look great but for the first time i feel like the pc version might have a significant edge. the (admittedly very small section i've seen so far seems to have simpler geometry so the improved lighting on pc would give the visuals a lot more depth
-i was in the first new map for seriously under a minute before hearing some dink shouting about how heavensward is so much better and he can't believe square would do this to us. chat window is hidden until further notice.

[Bebpo]

-i was in the first new map for seriously under a minute before hearing some dink shouting about how heavensward is so much better and he can't believe square would do this to us. chat window is hidden until further notice.

  that's the way to do it.

Yeah, I'm on gaf FC with like 100+ members online talking. Someone is gonna spoil shit they don't think is spoilery, so I have that off too.

Haven't got through the roadblock MSQ, but having fun doing other stuff. Now that my crafters are all hitting lvl.50 I realized that for omni-crafting, 50-60 is still going to be a pain in the ass. DoTL 50-60 is easy cause materials are generally cheap and just buy HQ and turn into GC everyday or do leves which cost nothing and only give you stuff. But crafting...GC turn-ins for lvl.50-60 stuff is very expensive to buy or if you make it yourself for all classes it's still very expensive in mats. Even Leves cost a lot of money since you have to turn in things. The only "free" xp is the moogle quests which are 3 a day for like 1-2/10th of a level each. If you're only leveling one crafter 50-60 it's great, just do 3 moogle quests a day. But when you're leveling like 8 or so lvl.50 crafters and you only get 3 quests a day...yeah.

For the time being I may abandon my crafters and just pick a single one and get it up to lvl.70 first along with my 3 DoTLs and then bring up the other lvl.50 crafters to 70 later. I'd probably go with goldsmith since it's already at almost lvl.55 and makes useful right-side gear and ingots to sell.

goddamnit, already sucked back into the meta world of crafting and money making instead of just adventuring and enjoying the game ;_;

I'm gonna stay up a bit late and try to get through the broken MSQ at like 2-3am PST and hopefully it works. Seems like the only congested roadblock of the game so if you make it through you're good.

[Valkyrie]

Is it the Ultros FC? Does Haman still play?

[Positive Touch]

welp i did all the sidequests in the first town, then promptly hit the msq wall. time to go play some quake champions

[Positive Touch]

ok i just got completely owned in quake champions fuck me i hate all videogames

[Freyj]

I'm just going to level RDM and SAM for now, but there have to be so many simple ways to ease the pain here. Drastically reduce the health of the solo instance mobs at the least.

[Positive Touch]

wait, you're saying you want it easier? i'm liking being at risk of dying again. did the first new blm quest and really had to work for that victory; it was pretty damn fun

[Freyj]

I mean for the solo instance road blocks in the SB MSQ. If they just made those specific mobs have say 1/5th their health, that's doubling / tripling the throughput for those parts of the MSQ.

[Bebpo]

I hear there's long ass cutscenes in the instance, so if people aren't skipping them that doesn't help.

I'm just fishing.

[Freyj]

These POTD groups are a god damned mess with all the RDM and SAM. No Auto Heal floors are certain death.

[Positive Touch]

pvp is shot too since you can't change classes in the lobby. just rdm and sam all over the place. on the other hand I got like 10 wins this morning and almost got the 60 win mount.

[Freyj]

I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to start the second SAM quest and now I'm stuck in an endless loop of 90002 errors upon logging in.

Time for Persona 5 or something.

[Positive Touch]

ok green man gaming has sb for $33 and i think im gonna bite. they sell codes for us games, right?

[Freyj]

is it a steam key? otherwise yeah I think GMG is fine

I bought it through BB and GCU for $32.

[Bebpo]

Well, since I couldn't play the SB msq (still broke), spent the afternoon getting my lvl.60 fisher geared up for SB. Now he's lvl.61 and everything's i180 outside the fishing pole which will be once I hit lvl.62. I'm catching fish in the starting SB areas no problem. Did the same for my Miner at lvl.55, he's all caught up in gear and can mine the first half of HW now. Botanist at lvl.52 is starting out in HW.

Learned all about scrips, souvenir collectibles and unspoiled nodes today. Man, gearing up is relatively easy with scrips. Gonna keep turning in the fishing collectibles and buy some i180 mining/bot tools since I already have a full i180 gathering gear. That way when they hit lvl.60 they'll be able to jump straight into useful in SB. On the crafting side I'm doing collectibles with my lvl.55 Goldsmith so I can gear out once I hit lvl.60.

The hard part seems like getting from 50-60? Like with gatherers you do your HQ daily GC turn-in and then leves until you can't take the boredom anymore. No point in doing collectibles for xp since the payout isn't that great and you need to do unspoiled nodes and you can just do a leve for the same xp in the same time.

With crafters, you do moogle quests but there's only a few a day and then...idk, wait? Doing leves or collectibles for xp means crafting lots of lvl.50+ stuff and the mats ain't cheap. So if you don't want to spend the money, not sure if there's anything to do for leveling from 50-60 with crafters besides your daily moogle quests.

[Positive Touch]

looks like the msq error has been fixed and the tears have ceased


ok wait maybe not

[Freyj]

Raubahn just put me into a 90k logon loop so nope. Think I'm locked out for an hour to an hour and a half now.

They just seem to reset the instance severs every XX hours and it works great for 30 minutes or so until the limits come down again.

This is honestly the worst launch I've seen in the last 10, maybe 15 years. I'd have to go back to shit like Anarchy Online to think of worse if this persists through today.

[Positive Touch]

i'm just really hoping it's fixed by the time  the official launch happens on tuesday. i can wait a weekend without getting bothered, but if it goes beyond that then i'm gonna pull out my pitchforks too

[Positive Touch]

for anyone that still needs their fix today, you can check out these stories on the lodestone that a lot of people don't seem to know about:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/#sidestory

they're well-written little backstories that give additional details for the main characters. worth reading if you're a ffxiv story nerd.

[Freyj]

I think the limit has been lifted temporarily at least. I was able to get through Raubahn and Pipin in the last hour.

Crisis averted, but losing yesterday still blows as I'll have little free time in the next two weeks while transitioning jobs.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, finally past Rauban!

Back to fishing/mining collectibles.

[Positive Touch]

Yeah, finally past Rauban!

Back to fishing/mining collectibles.

lolz whatever floats yr boat

haven't made it to the first dungeon yet but I'm having a lot of fun with it so far. music, graphics, and story are all great and I'm having a lot of close fights bc I don't fully know my character yet. blm seems to have changed very little;lots of other ppl are pissed bc of lost abilities. right now i dunno if they're right or it's the usual "omg changes noooo" crowd.

[Bebpo]

Like Freyj I pretty much freed up half Friday and all Saturday (outside a lunch engagement) to play but today, especially being Father's Day, I got stuff going on all day and then tomorrow's work so don't really have time to get into the MSQ. So when I have like 30-60 mins I just do GC turn-ins and collectibles

Assuming the game keeps functioning, I should have all next weekend to dig into the MSQ and I'll play a little over the weeknights. Probably gonna focus on the MSQ if I'm not working on crafters/gatherers since doing the 3.x content is gonna be rough now with queues as they are and disconnect issues.

Is it the Ultros FC? Does Haman still play?

Just saw I never replied to this, yeah GAF FC is Ultros FC. Not sure about Haman, I haven't really interacted with the FC outside of 3-4 people. There's usually 100-150 online at any time which is pretty crazy coming from my old FC where it was like 6-8 people online usually.

[Bebpo]

Alright, back from father's day and baking scones for my dad and cleaning up my kitchen. Made myself a mocha just now, and ready to finally sit down and play some real Stormblood MSQ tonight!

[Bebpo]

Did a little of the MSQ and did all of Fisher lvl.53-60 HW job quests so I could start the SB Fisher questline and do it as I explore the areas out. The HW one was enjoyable. The first one with the HQ Icepicks was really frustrating and I was having no luck after an hour or so but I found a trick that instead of using the Stonefly Nyph bait which is what online info says, if you use the Goblin Jig it at a certain time it cuts out all other possible fish, so I was getting nothing but Icepicks and beat it.

Then on the Shadowhiskers, Letter Puffer, Catkiller I got them all like on the first or second try with my lvl.180 gear set + patience + powerful hookset so was able to blow through that quick, which was nice. Started the Fisher questline in Stormblood but first lvl.60 quest was kinda weird because it's all Limsa ARR stuff with nothing about the new area and no new location quest giver like HW had. Will see what happens at the next lvl.63 one. I'm about halfway through lvl.62 (ahead of my lvl.61 NIN ) and should hit 63 after a few daily GC turn ins in a couple of days.

Now that I've figured out unspoiled nodes, leveling with Miner is really easy. Already up to lvl.57, so should hit 60 in the next week and will get to the SB job quest in that too. Goldsmith is 56 and ideally I'd like to get it to 60 so while I'm playing through the MSQ in SB I'm also doing the SB Fisher/Miner/Goldsmith questlines as well in the same areas for more stuff to do.

[Bebpo]

Sold a fish for 150k. Was nice. The lvl.60 fishing skill Patience 2 makes HQ rare fish pretty easy to catch. What used to be like 30-60 mins to catch one is like 3-15 mins especially with lvl.62 gear. When I get done with the MSQ if I need an income source for time vs money made, I may stick to just catching big rare fish and selling them. I've been trying like everything (I have about 80 items on sale on the MB) on Ultros to make money and most of it is drips and drabs. My retainers are all lvl.50+ so still trying to find the best money making stuff for them to grab. Was grabbing skins with my hunter and making leathers and selling those which is ok, but nothing special money-wise.

There's some good food that sells for like 1,000 gil each and costs like 3,000 gil to make like 99x but the HQ food won't let me use quick synthesis so it's not worth wasting my time making them manually. Otherwise quick synthesis foods would be pretty profitable.

Now that I got my gatherers and gatherer retainers up and almost all my classes to lvl.50-55 recipes I can actually make lvl.50-60 turn-ins from scratch for pretty cheap like couple thousand gil. Before this I'd have to buy them off the MB (mats or item) and it was often like 80-200k gil which I couldn't afford just for a GC turn in xp. But for like 5k in Mats and sending retainers to grab some stuff? Sure, the XP payout is worth it.

I also like that at this point I can auto-craft with quick synthesis lvl.30/40 stuff with NQ dirt cheap mats and I come back and have like 50% of them turned out HQ ingots or leathers or something which sell quite ok. Except Mythril Ingots, for some reason no one ever wants to buy mythril on any server.

Not sure what I'm saving up and trying to make all this gil for. I think it's cause I spent a lot on some stuff and dropped from 8 million -> 5 million, so I wanna get back up to 8-10 million to feel comfortable in case I need to gear out something. Or buy a house, but don't think I'll ever find one for sale before they're gone.

But yeah, I love collectibles. Having a lot of fun leveling gatherers now.

[Positive Touch]

one nitpick with the new expansion: my GOD why is the music for the smaller towns still really short? had the same issue with arr and hw. we spend a lot of time in towns, doing all the little sidequests or checking menus or whatever, so why are the songs only about a minute long each?? im gonna be hanging around for two years so why in gods name would i want to listen to a 60-second loop fifty thousand times?

sorry, it's not that big a deal, but it definitely gives me headaches if i don't disable the music after a short while

[Bebpo]

Haha, yeah. At least they're nice songs.

Oh, I keep forgetting to mention the BEST BEST BEST new change (although chocobo speed+ even in HW is awesome):
When you change classes all your shit doesn't have 60 second cooldowns. Since I often switch from combat to fishing to mining to crafting this is a BIG DEAL to instantly be able to use my abilities.

[Positive Touch]

yes good lord i love that. it was such a waste of time before.

[Bebpo]

When you're in that lvl.50-70 grind and your "dailies" before starting MSQ each day are 3 hours  :'(

[Positive Touch]

blegh that what you do on the down months. I can't resist the lure of the msq. which by the way continues to impress. just made it to kugane and my weeaboo receptors are overloaded

[Freyj]

I saw someone on another forum mention that SB MSQ feels Suikoden-y at times and I have to concur.

Despite the problems the game has / has had, the MSQ still amazes me at how good it can be.

[Positive Touch]

i didn't play much suikoden but I'd say parts of it reminded me of mass effect 3 in that now your character is a sort of legend and it's cool how dialog reflects that, like having sidequests where you train troops and whatnot.

[Freyj]

This game definitely handles the "I'm sort of a big fucking deal" thing way better than WoW ever has.

[Bebpo]

Got to Kugane. Cool town. The first dungeon looked really nice visually. Definitely felt like it had some budget to it.

I hit lvl.62 with my NIN and then ARGH WTF NINKI GAUGE 
Giant fucking ugly scroll gauge you can't turn off when not in combat. Like I literally can turn off every other element of the hud but the best I can do is sort of drag it to the corner as much as possible. Really annoying when in towns and even in dungeons it's just damn ugly. The Huton pinwheel gauge was way better.



And then as a mechanic...so Ninja's new 60-70 big deal is that that every so much damage they get to cast a big mini-limit break kind of attack? And there's almost no strategy to it. You just throw it in whenever you fill the bar? Uh, seems pretty dumb. Hopefully the other 2 job attacks at 68 & 70 are more interesting. Going through the first dungeon with the new job changes, man, they really dumbed down the job rotations too much. It's like so simple and boring going through dungeons and even fighting bosses with Ninja right now. I have half as much stuff to do. I get that they were trying to make the game more accessible, but it kinda feels like they went too far and removed the depth that makes the game fun to play. I hope they backtrack from this and the next expansion adds a lot more complexity to the jobs to bring them back to HW level which was perfect imo. 

You know, all they had to do to make it more manageable, less complicated was get rid of cross-class skills and do the role skill thing. They didn't need to remove actions on top of that...

I see what PT means about short town songs.  The Kugane daytime song is already kinda grating. Nightime is good though.

[Positive Touch]

FUCK I LOVE THIS GAME OMG

[Bebpo]

Well, I didn't die today so I guess powered through to Kugane last night for no reason /jk
Gonna take tomorrow off so will do Kugane stuff all day.

I read now they fucked fishing so hard in SB by making all gatherer job quest items unsellable. Fishers only way to make big bucks was to sell big game fish to upcoming fishers who can't catch them. Stupid change imo. Also means there's no plan B if a fishing job quest is "sit and roll RNG for 3 hours" and you don't want to waste your time.

[Positive Touch]

is there any demand for certain types of fish that can be displayed in an aquarium?

[Positive Touch]

html image hosting

MAJESTIC

[doctavius bonbon]

 Buckled under the pressure and resubbed + bought Stormblood.

Playing in ultros with the gaf guild now since I've known a few people there for a long time. If you doods ever want to party up, hit me up. I'm Lorde Doome ingame.