FFXIV

[Positive Touch]

conjurer/white mage, arcanist/summoner, and astrologan are healers

[Valkyrie]

you can configure what shows up in your chat log. i assume you can also turn off novice chat there too.

i play as a blm which is fun but not for everyone. you can't move much and the level 60 combo is ridiculously complex, but once you get good you can burn the shit out of ANYTHING.

butt, nachobro, mamacint, what are your in-game names?

I'm on a Japanese server (Atomos) because of ~timezones~, so unless you're awake evenings JST, there would be no point in the going to Hyperion. It's 2pm here and I can't play now, got stuff to do. I'm on my phone actually.

[nachobro]

you can configure what shows up in your chat log. i assume you can also turn off novice chat there too.

i play as a blm which is fun but not for everyone. you can't move much and the level 60 combo is ridiculously complex, but once you get good you can burn the shit out of ANYTHING.

butt, nachobro, mamacint, what are your in-game names?

I'm Tacoface Delicioso but still on Excalibur for now. Once I finish FFXV this week I'll probably move over and relevel Bard to max.

[Freyj]

If you do go NIN Bebpo, make sure you level Lancer / DRG to 34 for Invigorate and Blood for Blood.

Plus, DRG's abilities just look really cool. You'll get DRG envy when you hit Heavensward anyway.

[Bebpo]

Ok, so since I'm impatient and I have my starting Gladiator tank at around where my main Rogue is (I know this is not efficient since to get the +100% XP bonus your lower class needs to be 1 level or more below; so if you keep two classes constantly at the same level you end up leveling one twice as much as you need to), I'm playing as the Rogue for MSQs but anytime there is a dungeon or anything I need to queue I do that as my tank so I instantly get in instead of "ok, now wait for 30 minutes to get in for the next MSQ and you can't do any interesting cutscenes while you're in queue, and you can't change class and level your lower classes, so just go and whack some enemies and do some low xp quests for 30 minutes while you wait in queue"

But then I'm actually finding Gladiator tank a lot of fun in 4 person parties.  It's fun keeping enemies off of everyone and doing AoEs away from everyone.  Plus people appreciate that and it's nice to be appreciated    I'm also starting to get great loot in dungeons because no one wants to take the tank equip so I always get it.  I feel like tank class is super boring 1 on 1 in SP MSQs, but in a party it's a good class.  Rogue is a lot more fun 1 on 1 but DPS queues are lol

Also got my Pugilist to lvl.11 or 12.  Will definitely have it at 15 pretty soon, so once I hit 30 with my Rogue I can jump straight into Ninja.  Also got my Thermaturge to 10 so he can do some guildheists.

Got to the Golden Saucer.  Seems cool, will check it out next time I play.  But yeah, dungeons are a ton of fun and guildheists are kinda fun too.  I now see why MMOs are enjoyable, the group stuff with loot and teamwork and boss fights and interesting enemy setups is great rpg stuff.  Looking forward to all the rest of the dungeons and multiplayer boss fights.

If you do go NIN Bebpo, make sure you level Lancer / DRG to 34 for Invigorate and Blood for Blood.

Plus, DRG's abilities just look really cool. You'll get DRG envy when you hit Heavensward anyway.

34 seems like a lot of extra work considering I'm at lvl.1 w/Lancer and being at lvl.19 now with my Rogue/Gladiator the XP jumps between levels are getting big.  I need 50-60k xp to get to the next level and even MSQs are only paying out 7k.  But maybe.  I'll see.  I think when I finally hit 30 and get my real "job" I'll probably just wanna stick to it for a while.

[Freyj]

The commendation system seems to help tenfold with keeping people cooperative and helpful. Likes are a hell of a drug.

And those two DRG abilities aren't strictly necessary but they are NIN's two best DPS cooldowns.

[Bebpo]

So I'm noticing I'm getting way ahead of the MSQ levels.  Like each day I'm doing the duty roulette for guildheist & one for dungeon and between that and the hunting logs and MSQ getting a lot of xp!  Doesn't help the MSQs don't go up in level all that quickly.  I just did the 3rd dungeon, the copper mines and I'm lvl.22 now and that was like lvl.17 or 18.  Kinda impatient because I want the story quests to get to lvl.20 already so I can get my chocobo and grand company gameplay.  What's the point of buying a house and how much money do you need before you can even do stuff like that?  I still only have like 12,000 gil.

Did a some dungeons as my DPS rogue tonight and I'm not sure if I like it better than playing as a tank.  It's pretty fun being the team leader and engaging all the enemies.  I definitely think after I get my Ninja, the next job I'll go for is getting my Gladiator to a Warrior.

Oh, one thing that's really different about this game compared to single player rpgs is all my attacks are just 1 enemy.  So engaging a group means hitting one at a time.  At some point do you start getting AoE attacks with physical attackers that hit multiple enemies?  Is it only certain classes or is it just those kind of attacks don't appear in the < lvl.25 classes yet.

[Himu]

How do I get my second job? I'm lv 10.

[Bebpo]

Also at this point it's really the dungeons that are keeping me hooked and compelling me to want to play.  The MSQ stuff so far is kinda boring.  The exploration, surprisingly, I'm finding kinda sucks compared to a single player rpg.  You play something like Xenoblade or FFXII and you get to a big field or Skyrim or whatever and you just want to explore and find cool shit.  I don't get that feeling almost at all here.  You're kind of level limited (aka, this area you load into is now 20 levels higher) and when you do go to a new area exploring basically just finds you some encampments or a town with a bunch of filler-ish quests and generic NPCs.  There's no hidden dungeons you just stumble into since they're all story-based, and no great loot or anything.  Like there's just almost no compelling reason to explore and I find the game works a lot better when you just warp around doing the quests you want.  The warping around the world constantly also kinda takes away from exploring a bit since I'm mainly just fast traveling between points constantly.

But, the class quests are great and have a lot of character.  I find the NPC characters in the class quests are a lot more memorable than the MSQ characters I've run across who I can't even remember any of their names.  I think the class quests are a smaller scale and it's a lot more exciting and interesting, plus the missions are tuned around the abilities of your class which makes it more fun.  And then dungeons, dungeons are super super great and have sold me on the MMO genre.  Going through dungeons with other people, getting cool diablo-ish loot constantly, puzzles within dungeons, mini-bosses and then cool big bosses with cutscenes, these dungeons are so much fun.

So yeah, right now I'm playing for the dungeons and the class quests and kinda bearing the MSQ hoping it gets better as it unlocks more and more gameplay systems.  I'm also hoping that there are more cool things to do in the world that will be unlocked and be a lot of fun like dungeons and class quests like Primal fights and Grand Company stuff.  I've done a lot of the little quests around the world when I'm somewhere and the quests are around my level but it's all fairly boring go kill some enemies kinda stuff.  Also the quests that make you use emotes are not fun.  I've learned to bind the emote needed to the quickbar but before that when I was fighting with a controller and then had to quickly type /soothe before the enemy dies on a kb was annoying and there have been like half a dozen quests using soothe so far.

The music is great, it's really grown on me.  Definitely like the town tunes and the main battle theme.

How do I get my second job? I'm lv 10.

Now you can go to any guild in the world and do the blue+ quest at the entrance of each guild and you get that job.  This applies to non-combat jobs as well.

[Positive Touch]

BITCHES THEY JUST ANNOUNCED YASUMI FUCKING MATSUNO IS DESIGNING THE 4.0 RAID AND ITS CALLED "RETURN TO  IVALICE" FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Bebpo]

BITCHES THEY JUST ANNOUNCED YASUMI FUCKING MATSUNO IS DESIGNING THE 4.0 RAID AND ITS CALLED "RETURN TO  IVALICE" FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Glad I jumped in!

Wait, what's 4.0?  What's a raid? 
PT can you answer some of my Qs from my last 2 posts?  I still have a lot to learn about FFXIV!  Thnx.

[Positive Touch]

oops i meant to answer that stuff earlier sorry hold on

[Bebpo]

My first "MMO Story":  Me and this other guy get auto-matched into a 4 person party.  2 people drop including the healer and tank.  We sit and wait like 10 mins for it to add new members and the other guy tells me it can take a while at this time of night (when is a good time to find people in dungeons?), so I'm like "can we just do it 2p?" and he's like well we can give it a try.  And so we charge in and have life and death battles against a few bats and then we get to a part with 3 enemies locking on to us and he dies horribly and then I die horribly and we respawn and we're like "well, at least we tried /shrug" and then we quit out.

oops i meant to answer that stuff earlier sorry hold on

No rush, I honestly feel bad about asking you so many questions

Actually re-reading my posts I think I just had one question about if you get AoE attacks on melee characters at some point?  Oh and the point of buying a house and how to do it and about how much that costs?

[Himu]

BITCHES THEY JUST ANNOUNCED YASUMI FUCKING MATSUNO IS DESIGNING THE 4.0 RAID AND ITS CALLED "RETURN TO  IVALICE" FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

FF12-2 continues!

[Positive Touch]

the story gets cooler as you go, but some of the quests in the 20s suck compete ass. like, everything with titan. literally NO ONE likes that part.

uhhh let's see...

houses cost millions of dollars and there's limited plus available. it's strictly a "for fun" thing. you have to craft /buy furniture yourself. you can also build an airship and sent that out to get items. if you're in an fc, they can buy a house that you all share.

single target vs group depends on what dps class you're playing as. i think monk and dragoon focus on single targets.

if you think the dungeons are cool now, whoahmg wait till you see what's later. there is some wild boss fights in this game, and tons of variety. the extreme versions of bosses can take you days to learn and then complete bc they're so damn tough. at the last fan fest they interviewed some of the boss designers, and it turns out that most of the best ones were designed by this one young guy. i forget his name rn, but he is absolutely someone to watch whenever he moves on from ff14. a master of Japanese-style (as in, build a scenario around the pc's abilities) game design.

4.0 is the upcoming Stormblood expansion. 3.0 is Heavensward, 2.0 is a Realm Reborn, and 1.0 was the canceled pos.

[Positive Touch]

don't feel bad about asking questions! i love taking about this game!

[Bebpo]

the story gets cooler as you go, but some of the quests in the 20s suck compete ass. like, everything with titan. literally NO ONE likes that part.

uhhh let's see...

houses cost millions of dollars and there's limited plus available. it's strictly a "for fun" thing. you have to craft /buy furniture yourself. you can also build an airship and sent that out to get items. if you're in an fc, they can buy a house that you all share.

single target vs group depends on what dps class you're playing as. i think monk and dragoon focus on single targets.

if you think the dungeons are cool now, whoahmg wait till you see what's later. there is some wild boss fights in this game, and tons of variety. the extreme versions of bosses can take you days to learn and then complete bc they're so damn tough. at the last fan fest they interviewed some of the boss designers, and it turns out that most of the best ones were designed by this one young guy. i forget his name rn, but he is absolutely someone to watch whenever he moves on from ff14. a master of Japanese-style (as in, build a scenario around the pc's abilities) game design.

4.0 is the upcoming Stormblood expansion. 3.0 is Heavensward, 2.0 is a Realm Reborn, and 1.0 was the canceled pos.

-What's an FC?  Is that the linkshell?  Like am I part of the bore's FC?
-Do you know any melee classes that aren't single target?  I'd like to swing an axe or sword and hit all the enemies around me like a fighter class in Diablo.
-Speaking of which, people have little icons by their name?  What's that?
-So the dungeons and game gets tougher?  Cool.  In the first few, most of the time I'm partied with like 3 people who are lvl.60 down-synced to lvl.17/18/19/20 and the healer keeps everyone at full health and the tank keeps enemies occupied and it's pretty tough to ever be in any danger.  I'm guessing when you hit max level shit gets real and it's all about unique loot and great strategies to win as a team.

[Positive Touch]

oh and a raid is... kind of a loosely-used term in this game,but generally it refers to the optional multiplayer levels. there's extreme versions of bosses, raids with 24 players in them, and 8-man raids that have a bunch of short but extremely hard levels. after you beat the 2.0 story you'll be able to take on these large side stories that will unlock various raids. you can then do the same thing after you beat heavenswards main story.

[Positive Touch]

fc is a Free Company. a linkshell is more like a chat room. you can only belong to one fc at a time. it also has its own chat channel, plus lots of other bonuses: a shared company chest, the ability to buy a house together, different bonuses that can be activated like extra battle exp, etc. i can invite you to mine if you want. I'm new to it too, but i know a few of the people in it and they're very nice and helpful. it can be pretty quiet a lot tho.

as for dps... lemme ask around. i play black mage and bard which both have a lot of aoe attacks, but ofc they're ranged. I'll see if there's melee ones.

[Bebpo]

Oh and another question.  So Heavensword introduced 3 new jobs that start at lvl.30 and have no prior specific job required.  Does this mean that they don't have access to other class skills besides the cross-class skills?  Like with a NIN from what I understand I get ALL of Rogue's abiltities + Puglist's abiltiies + NIN's abilities which is a lot of stuff + cross-class skills.  But if the new jobs are only New job abilities + cross-class skills it would seem like their skill pool would be kinda limited, but I guess maybe made up for by more powerful skills in their job path?  I'm thinking about maybe doing the Dark Knight instead of Warrior which is why I'm asking.  Once I hit 30 I'll have a lot of questions about higher level jobs. 

Also am I correct in thinking that every time an expansion roles around now, if the new jobs start at lvl.30 that lots of level 60 players will drop back to lvl.30 to play the new jobs, so you'll see tons of players in the 30-70 range, but 1-30 will be kinda ghost town and that is why it's kinda ghost town sometimes for the 1-30 game I'm playing now?  Aka, after lvl.30 should I find more and more players as I get closer to 50-60?

[Positive Touch]

so ninja and mini have a few aoe abilities it seems...

generally aoe is just good for trash mobs in dungeons. once you get to the boss fights you'll want to use all your most brutal single-target attacks. you'll learn what the most effective combos are as you try to keep buffs going and rotate different abilities as you wait for others to cool down. eventually pulling off some crazy convos will be nothing but muscle memory and you'll be able to crush anything (as long as you know the mechanics of each boss fight lol)

[Positive Touch]

noooo, ninja won't have all those abilities. once you hit level 30 with a class you have option to upgrade it to a normal Final Fantasy job. like pugilist becomes monk, thaumaturge becomes black mage, rogue becomes ninja, etc. the upgraded version is the same damn thing, you just get to do more quests that will get you some new abilities. afaik most of the cross-class skills you can use are buff/debuff stuff, tho there are exceptions.

new heavensward jobs just skip the whole class part and jump straight to the job. you'll have a whole bunch of abilities at your disposal as soon as you unlock them. the new expansion seems like it will start new classes at 50.

most players play old levels through the daily roulettes. the downtime you're experiencing is more likely due to people taking a break from the game before the next expansion. you'll always have long queue times as a dps tho, because everyone plays a a dps.

[Freyj]

I don't much about the casters but AoE abilities are kinda spammy. For NIN you basically spam one ability and throw in Doton and Katon Mudras when you can.

Just wait until you get your first Mudras

[Positive Touch]

BITCHES THEY JUST ANNOUNCED YASUMI FUCKING MATSUNO IS DESIGNING THE 4.0 RAID AND ITS CALLED "RETURN TO  IVALICE" FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

FF12-2 continues!

poor revenant wings

[Freyj]

https://streamable.com/25l4x 

[Himu]

played for an hour, friended bebpo, he showed me where i can find gear shop. then i got invited to an FC that is full of FF8 fanatics (the name of the FC is Balamb Olive Garden) so i feel right at home. First real time getting social in the game. When I was a teen I could do nothing but fishing and chatting with friends play ff11. but these days I'm more about business and just doing missions, so it was refreshing and nostalgic.

also had to explain to bebpo, as this is his first mmo, that mmo's aren't usually this user friendly. He said when you get to a new city and attune you can port there any time, but mmo's aren't usually like that. At least, the ones I'm used to. In FFXI if you want to go to another city or continent you had to take an airship or travel by boat and hope you survived the onslaught. And if you wanted to go back to the old place you were at you had to travel back allllll the way to that airship/boat/whatever, same in WoW I think. bebpo doesn't know how good he's got it. This game is completely absent the old school mmo grind and it's mind blowing to me. He told you can travel across the world at level 14, and again, that shit blows my fucking mind. You wouldn't leave your starter area until like level 20 or something in an oldschool 2000's era mmo. Jesus Christ. This game is MADE for working adults.

[Bebpo]

So I spent most of the whole night in Golden Saucer after doing the intro tour quest.  Most of the time playing Triple Triad.  Game is good stuff.  I also tried Lord of Vermillon and it was so terrible I will never do that again!  The 1gil games are kinda fun.  And I bought a chocobo and raced it against other people!  And I won first place in my first race even though I'm terrible at it because someone used some item against me that caused my chocobo to rage and keep running at full speed which killed the endurance, but I literally ran out of endurance 1 step from the finish line so it actually made me run past everyone else and win    WAS AWESOME. 



Dunkles Akane is my chocobro

I like the mini-lotto one you can do 3 times a day, put my dibs in for the full lotto.  I tried a GATE quest but I didn't get it at all.  I was delivering items to 3 people and I'd just auto lose suddenly while running at some point -_-

I like how the casino is setup.  The announcements that things are constantly going on and people everywhere is super cool.  As my first MMO this is really neat!  I just wish there were more NPCs to play Triple Triad against.  I'm afraid to start playing against other humans because I figure everyone is level 50-60 and has amazing decks and I have no chance.  I googled it a bit and I see there are other people in the world you can play against and there are local rules for each city which is neat.  Collecting cards is fun.

So MGP...you know, the little 20-30 MGP you can win, or even a few 100 MGP you can win all seems meaningless when challenges get you like $10,000 MGP.  I was struggling to get to 600 MGP to buy my first Triple Triad card and then I finished some challenges while I was doing stuff and suddenly I had $20,000 MGP and bought a bunch of cards.

Back in the story, still not at lvl.20 MSQs yet.  I unlocked dyes and retainers.  Retainers are nice and just in time because I was starting to run out of space with weapons, so now I have storage box people, yay.  I got my Puglist to lvl.16 along the way and Gladiator to lvl.20.  So now I have a lvl.5 character (Marauder), lvl.10 character (Thermatuge), lvl.15 character (Puglist), lvl.20 character (Gladiator) and soon lvl.25 character (Rogue) that I can change to and play with people and be around their level like Queen of Ice.  Also got to about lvl.5 in Cooking and Goldsmith just for something different to try them out.

Thanks for explaining the lvl.30 job upgraded PT.  So since I won't get access to all of the Pugilist skills with my Ninja, I guess there's no point in taking my Puglist past the 15 requirement.

[Freyj]

MMOs have definitely moved past the XI ways of taking an hour and a half just to get to a quest location. Even XI has mostly. Quality of life is king.

[Bebpo]

Picked up Heavensward in anticipation since it was $9.99 on the steam sale.  Does it come with an additional free month?  Or is that only a base game thing?

[Positive Touch]

no additional free month sorry :/

[SpeedStats]

I totally lost my password and went scrounging around in a old external hard drive to find it for the Bore.

I main Scholar (257), Ninja (250), and Bard (247) if anyone has any rotation questions for those! Ninja was my first job and I really enjoyed it because it sped up the gcd if I had a Huton on. Mudras make the job work so well. 

This game is MADE for working adults.

You know, I felt the same kinda thing when I first started playing? I used to tell Sunblade, "oh no I can't play this I have no time i have school and hospital work and all that shit". I have a ton of time and it's really easy to level up quickly (especially now that they buffed XP for each quest in the MSQ I think).  Go at your own pace, etc.  I eventually got everything to 60 even when I was busy or not playing every day.

Lemme know when you're on on Twitter so you don't have to play alone.  I'll just follow you around and heal you if you need it like last time.

Also we have a Bore Linkshell on Hyperion. Let me (Asha Sunblade), Onix Sunblade, or Positive Touch know if you want in.

[Bebpo]

Did my first trial in the MSQ, was ok.  I mean I guess I was expecting something a little harder.  Also, no loot is kinda a bummer (unless I missed something because I was in a cutscene?).  I mean for bosses where the fight is literally, tank sitting in front, healer healing tank, for the other 2 people you're just punching on a big HP bar that can't do anything back.  Yeah at the end Ifrit started doing AoE attacks on his back but they were easy to dodge.  Since trials are just straight up boss fights, no dungeons or anything, I'd like them to be intense and tough.

Also had my first bad experience with a random match-making party.  Was doing a sidequest that had a dungeon (cool) as a tank and ran into two problems.  1 was a healer not healing me constantly so I was struggling to stay alive while pulling aggro and 2 there was some high level 60 on every job player who thought they were so good they can just run ahead as a mage and take care of everything themselves...and then they come running back with like 6 enemies on them which I pull off and immediately die -_- But mainly, my understanding is that if you're a Tank the most important person in your party is your healer keeping you alive.  Like just tank+healer could probably make it through most stuff on their own even though it'd take a while since Tank damage is weak.  If you're DPS/Healer the most important person is your tank because they keep the enemies from attacking you and killing you faster than you can heal.

Had a pretty long wait for the trial match-making (was instant with my tank on the dungeon), so since I've kind of run out of SP things to do while waiting in queues since I don't want to just grind enemies on the overworld and these small quests are all pretty boring, luckily I've found that I can just hang in the Golden Saucer and gamble while waiting on my queue.  Pretty much more fun than anything else I can do.  I guess I could do FATEs but I'm not sure where the ones around my level always are, and I'm getting really bored of playing FATEs solo.  It's really rare when I actually run into an active FATE and there's some people fighting and I join up.  When that actually happens, especially when it's a big boss FATE, it's basically a mini-trial and pretty fun.

What was the big deal with Mamash?  Are you guys all lvl.60 and it's just a lvl.50 mob?

Oh, I did the MSQ that took me to the Materia goblin!  I learned how to break down my old 100% spirit-bonded eqp into Materia.  Couple questions.  How do I put the materia into my equipment that has materia empty slots?  I couldn't figure it out at all so I have all this materia but no idea how to use it.  Also is there any way to see what kind of materia a piece of equipment is going to turn into?  Like I want some DEX+1 since I'm Rogue, but I broke down like 10 things and got mainly VIT/STR/CRIT+

So the next story quest is the choose a Grand Company quest so I'm looking forward to the new stuff that'll open up.  At this point is there anything else I should be doing while waiting for queues on MSQs that require them (or new Guildheists?).  I'm around lvl.24.

[Positive Touch]

you can't decide what materia your equipment will turn into, although each type of equipment will only turn into a few certain types of materia i.e. mage clothes will turn into spell-boosting materia.

you meld materia you have 3 options:
-have a crafter class that corresponds with the material the item is made of, and have your class at the same level as the equipment
-find someone else who meets these requirements
-go to the guy labeled "materia melder" in the market at a major city and pay him to do it for you

there isn't much else to do now while you wait on the queue I think. tbh i usually just play on my phone while I wait.

that big ass monster we were fighting was a hunt. they rarely  pop up on each map and are extremely powerful and most require a team to kill. killing one gets you various types of special currency.  the one we were fighting is notorious bc he can turn everyone in the area to stone for 30+ seconds. he sucks.

[Bebpo]

Taking a break, the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure FFXIV is for me in the long term.  Like it was really fun at first when it was all new, and then I got to change classes and it was fun, and then lvl.15 unlocked a bunch of stuff like dungeons and golden saucer and that was fun.  But where I'm at now about 36 hours in after 2 weeks, it feels like the MSQ are holding me back.  Like if I could just go do stuff and then gain levels and then go do new higher level dungeons I think it'd pace a lot better.  But for the most part the dungeons and a lot of the gameplay systems are locked behind MSQ progression and the MSQ is honestly just really slow paced and boring.  Before going in I wanted a big fleshed out single player story like an FF sp game.  But now I think I'd rather the main stories in these MMOs be short and leave you free to spend most of your time doing sidequests and sidestuff.

Like if i I had to rate how I'm liking the game now, it'd be like an 8/10 rpg.  Some great stuff, but a lot of running and whacking on things and going through motions waste of time as well.  I have this sneaking feeling that the real game is at lvl.50, or now because of Heavensward at lvl.60.  Because once everyone is level capped, and they keep increasing the difficulty it comes down to loot + strategy and that sounds a hell of a lot more fun than the press button to win gameplay for the last 30 hours.  I mean the closest game I've played to an MMO was playing through Diablo 3 at launch with The Bore.  That was fun and exciting and we were all around the same level and we'd get loot and toss stuff on the ground for others to take and it was good times.  in FFXIV I joined up and met with Queen of Ice but because our levels were far apart there was not much I could actually do with Queen.  I couldn't even give some equip around her level because most of my equip was untradeable.  We couldn't co-op MSQs, and it was like well I guess we can do some fates or small quest or leves or something, but for being a social game it felt like there wasn't much we could do co-op.  I'd imagine if I play with you guys who are level 60 it's pretty similar.  Like until you get to endgame where everyone is the same level (but even then you have item level differences), it feels like you mostly just play it solo with strangers matchmaking in dungeons.  But the solo is pretty boring.

I dunno, I think I'll play a bit more and do Grand Company and get my Chocobo and maybe I'll join a Free Company that you guys are in (what do you have to do in your free company?), but I can see myself getting burned out/bored by 50 hours and only being halfway through the MSQ.  Like as I was fighting Ifrit and doing fates I kept thinking I'd rather play FFXV (or a different SP rpg) and do it there with better pacing and having more control over my teammates.

that big ass monster we were fighting was a hunt. they rarely  pop up on each map and are extremely powerful and most require a team to kill. killing one gets you various types of special currency.  the one we were fighting is notorious bc he can turn everyone in the area to stone for 30+ seconds. he sucks.

Oh, that sounds fun.  I'm guessing this is a lvl.50/60 thing?

[Himu]

I've been busy this week. Blame me more than the game.

[Positive Touch]

you're absolutely right that the "real" game starts at 50. there's tons of content, stuff to unlock and grind for, etc. dunno what to tell you about what to do till then. it's a common complaint that it takes too damn long to go through the msq and there is no way around it. they're finally implementing a skip but who knows when that'll be ready. honestly if you focus on nothing but the msq you can do it relatively fast, but it'll still prolly take a week or two.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, at this point I'm just focusing on running through the MSQ and doing my class quests.  I'm not even bothering with the duty roulettes because I have too much xp already and the MSQ is too easy.  Would you say I'm about 1/3rd through the Realm Reborn MSQ?

[Positive Touch]

at the part where you join a grand company? yeah that's prolly 1/3 of the way thru. there's a lot of msq between 2.0 and heavensward with a lot of running back and forth, but you have all the extra dungeons and raids and whatnot to go thru too so it keep you interested.

[Positive Touch]

FUCK I CAN'T BELIEVE MATSUNO IS WORKING ON THIS GAME I'M SO EXXXXCITED

[Bebpo]

Yeah, at this point I'm just focusing on running through the MSQ and doing my class quests.  I'm not even bothering with the duty roulettes because I have too much xp already and the MSQ is too easy.  Would you say I'm about 1/3rd through the Realm Reborn MSQ?

There's 184 MSQ in 2.0 and 100 in 2.X

 That's kinda why I was urging you to go do MSQ, you would complete them by doing things you normally do at that same player level and you could finish class quests or your hunt/challenge log why you wait for dungeons to pop.

Cant do class quests while in queues because most, at least with rogue, are story based and instanced. 

[Freyj]

It's definitely worth it to just focus on MSQ and the Class / Job quests on your first Class. There's a loooot of shit to do in this game and not all of it is worth the time.

MSQ picks up a lot closer to 50 and doesn't really let up. 2.1 is kinda meh, but doesn't take too long.

[Bebpo]

The problem is that the MSQ is boring in the early levels so you need to do side stuff to get some variety going and keep it interesting.  I don't even care about xp and gaining levels anymore, I just want varied fun things to do.

[Positive Touch]

2.4

iceheart

[Himu]

I don't find MSQ boring at all. There's a lot of mystery going on with my story and especially the archer story. Maybe mage MSQ just sux

[Bebpo]

Actually I think part of it is I just need to get to some new locations.  In the first 5-10 hours I'd mapped out the 3 areas around UlDah (West/Central/East) and in the next 5 I'd done the same for Limsa Loma (Upper/Middle/Lower) and so far all the MSQs have just been going around the locations in them.  I know there's still a good chunk of the world map I haven't even stepped foot into and I think seeing some fresh new areas soon will make it more exciting.

I don't find MSQ boring at all. There's a lot of mystery going on with my story and especially the archer story. Maybe mage MSQ just sux

The story has nothing to do with your Archer class   That's your class quest line and I really like those!  The MSQ is a generic main story pathline everyone does though from what I gather there are 3 slightly varied versions depending on your starting town (ie, the same stuff happens but with a different local cast in a different location).

2.4

iceheart

Is 2.4 Heavensward?  I don't know what numbers mean after 2.0 being Realm Reborn lol

[Himu]

Heavensword is 3.0

[Positive Touch]

no after 2.0 there were 5 free expansions released every few months. they had new story, raids, items, whatever in them. then after the big finale in 2.5 they released heavensward. did the same thing post-hs too, although 3.5 isn't due out till next month.

[Bebpo]

Oh, cool.

You know I was googling about FFXIV burnout/boredom and reading articles from players on what works with the game and what doesn't and I read one that had a good idea.  Instead of doing dungeon roulette at maximum sync (ie lvl 24 players on a lvl.20 dungeon), there should be an option for minimum sync that would sync everyone at the lowest possible level to do the dungeon (ie lvl.20 players for a lvl.20 dungeon) and maybe have slightly better rewards. 

Because I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, when I turn lvl.20 and go into a lvl.20 dungeon for the first time, the party members I'm going to get are mostly lvl.60 players on their dungeon roulette coming in at lvl.24 and maybe the dungeons wouldn't be so cakewalk if most of the party wasn't 4-5 levels above them but actually at the same level.  Just might be a way to make the dungeons more exciting/challenging.

[Freyj]

The reason the roulettes exist is that things that are a requirement for you most of the player base finished eons ago. So if you didn't have max levels queuing, you'd sit in queue potentially forever blocked from continuing your storyline.

It's not really that they're max level that makes things a cakewalk though, it's more that they've done the dungeons 50 odd times now. A "new only" option would be interesting, but most MMOs are interesting in getting players in and out of queued content ending in success as quickly as possible to avoid any frustration with waiting or grouping.

[Bebpo]

The reason the roulettes exist is that things that are a requirement for you most of the player base finished eons ago. So if you didn't have max levels queuing, you'd sit in queue potentially forever blocked from continuing your storyline.

It's not really that they're max level that makes things a cakewalk though, it's more that they've done the dungeons 50 odd times now. A "new only" option would be interesting, but most MMOs are interesting in getting players in and out of queued content ending in success as quickly as possible to avoid any frustration with waiting or grouping.

Actually I think you misunderstood my post.  The article I read wasn't talking about a "new players only" option for duty roulette, but rather that lvl.50/60 players should have a "max sync/min sync" option which would either sync them at the dungeon level + 4-5, or would sync them exactly at the dungeon level for added challenge and greater rewards.

[Bebpo]

MSQ is getting a lot better now around the free companies.  It's starting to get a little more focused than just run around the world doing menial tasks for different groups.

I went to Southern Gridania to do the Palace of the Dead quest and there was toooooons of people in the area.  Like FATEs were all around my level, 20-30 stuff and there were always people doing them.  I did a boss fought with my lvl.21 Gladiator and was getting owned after a while and a couple of archers came and peeled him off my back for a bit and we beat him.  Was neat.  Then I went to the area where the Palace of the Dead is and saw the most players I've ever seen in the game in one spot 



I did the Palace of the Dead floors 1-10, but the group I paired with (who were really nice) were speedrunning it so I just ran along and beat up some enemies and kept going to the next level and then left after the boss.  I don't really understand what was going on at all, but I got some cool lvl IV Materia (i70) which I can't even meld onto equipment at my level now.

I got my Chocobo!  Is there any way to make your chocobo faster?  Also I know you guys were talking about having my chocobo fight with me against enemies, how do you do that?  All I can do is summon it to ride and then it disappears when I get off.

The game is definitely a lot more fun in areas where there are lots of other people.  Hopefully as I get higher in level I'll encounter more areas like that.  Oh and Postiive Touch, I joined your Free Company.  Checked out the house and donated some money cause I didn't know what else to do.  There was only like 1 person online and then 2 for a little bit and then no one later on at night.  Are there like FC quests?

[Positive Touch]

welcome to the fc! sorry, there aren't any associated quests.

you can't make your chocobo faster lol. to have it fight for you you need to use a gysahl green, which you can buy at the chocobo ranch in the central shroud.

[Bebpo]

So is the FC basically a big linkshell that shares a house and you can share items?  Like what am I supposed to do to "rank up" in the FC and help the FC rank up in the overall?


Also, I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate the localization team that is in charge of this game.  The flowerly language everywhere and millions and millions of hard to remember or spell fantasy terms for everything is super annoying to parse quickly.  I tried switching it to Japanese text and it's so much more straightforward.  Hell instead of Mendor or whatever the fuck for the weapon repair guy it just says like "PAUL - WEAPONS REPAIR GUY" in Japanese.  I'd play this in Japanese text but there's 8 billion lines of text and I skim/fast-read English 10x quicker so I'll deal with the crappy localization but yeah I hate this localization team.  I mean then you look at World of FF and it's the BEST localization and way better than the original with all the goofy random shit (often pretty funnny!) in the monster descriptions in a Paper Mario way.  SE's localization is just all over the place.

I feel like they should've got Alexander O' Smith to be the head of FFXIV's localization team.  It feels like they're kinda trying to do something like that but with a different tone (kinda like this m'lady flowery old english) but they suck at it. 

And then there's random name changes, like in Japanese version the good guy team is the Akatsuki no Ketsui which means "Blood Alliance of the Dawn", yet in English it's the "Seventh Scions of the Dawn" or something.  Like why change this shit other than to use an oddball word like Scion to make it sound more foreign?

Sometimes it even gets in the way of the gameplay.  Like I'm doing the sightseeing log unlock quest and it's telling me to find the place "Afore the Fane" and /lookout.  I zero idea what that line even means in English.  I'm sure if I switched it to Japanese text it'd be something like "go stand before the waterfall and /lookout"; Man, 200+ hours of dealing with this shit

[Freyj]

I get what you mean now. I guess the reason it syncs to a few levels above entry level is so as to make the prospect of roulettes more appealing or less cumbersome (you end up doing a lot of it in end game, a lot).

And I've said for eons that O' Smith should've been the tone of the series as a whole, especially since they can't seem to figure out what that is. I like XIVs translation well enough though.

[Positive Touch]

you don't need to do anything to rank up the fc. tbh I don't know how to but I'm pretty sure our is maxed out at lvl 8.

[Bebpo]

Finally got around to the fishing guild and omg, I totally forgot I love fishing in rpgs.  Like my constant NPC triple triad matches (I must be playing at least 5-10 matches each session), fishing will be a nice diversion between questing.

One question, if I do grand company leves and they're in a different region so it's for a different grand company, do I still get the rewards for my grand company?  Also before I get too far in my Grand Company (I picked Limsa Lomina), is there anything I should know about GCs because maybe I want to change to a different one?

[Positive Touch]

no matter who's leves you do, you'll always get point for your gc. and there's no difference in gcs besides the aesthetics of the gear you can get from each one.

[Bebpo]

So I've been doing alot of reading about this game because it's so large and I'm trying to get familiar with it.  Each day I think I learn more and more stuff about how it all works.

Now I'm trying to figure out timesink in order to figure how long this game is gonna take me since I got other stuff to do and I normally play through rpgs over a couple of weeks or a month or two and then move on.  So let me know if I'm wrong about this but this is my understanding of the main story if I don't care about getting the best loot or socializing or anything and just wanna play through the story content.

2.0 - Realm Reborn - Probably between 80-120 hours for MSQ
2.1-2.5, five additional ~10 hour story DLCs for another 50 hours of MSQ
3.0 - Heavensword - Around a 60 hour normal length rpg for MSQ
3.1-3.5 five additional ~10 hour story DLCs for another 50 hours of MSQ

Is that right?  Because it seems like the big timesink is getting caught up.  But once you're caught up with FFXIV, you just buy a new expansion every 2 years which is the length of a normal rpg and then in the year between expansions you play 5 short DLCs.  Basically seems like if you're caught up that it's not a big timesink, more like it's just an rpg series you like that gets a new 50-60 hour rpg each year (Disgaea, Kiseki, etc...). 

But getting caught up to 3.4 right now is probably about 270 hours long MSQ from 2.0, part of that is ARR's MSQ is more like a 120 hour rpg.

I'm just going to look at it like I looked at Kiseki/Trails last two years where I decided to catch up from Trials FC to Cold Steel 2 which was seven 50-70 hour rpgs so like 350 hours and I did it in about a year and a half.  But part of that was because I took a 3-6 month break between each game to get a breather.  Maybe I'll do the same here and between each 50 hour story chunk I'll take a break and play other rpgs for a few months and then be caught up by the time the expansion after Stormblood comes out.  Or I get addicted and I just play FFXIV as my main rpg for 4-5 months and I'm caught up right before Stormblood comes out.  Dunno, will see.  But I like the idea that once you are caught up the game is manageable and is not a big timesink.

[Positive Touch]

all that sounds about right. i just keep a sub going bc I like having the ability to log back in any time and poke around. 

[Cerveza mas fina]

beps is this your first mmo?

that first mmo hit