Final Fantasy XIV

[Kyero Fox]

That "The Vault" cutscene tho....... Wow... I don't think I've ever got those type of feels in any other MMO.

[cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by Hooves

So was just farming Sohm Al for WHM leveling. Suddenly flying cat companion dropped That's Kona on the left who was tagging along with me with PLD.

Images

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It dropped and I won it on my very first Sohm Al run the other day

[ninjastarforcex]

i really want to play this game but no time for online games orz

[Edge Meltdown]

The new raid is surprisingly easy... I guess it's only the normal mode. I wonder how much has changed when we get the savage version. D:

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Asuras

Personally, thus far, I've found the game to be adequate, but nothing has particularly wow'ed me beyond the scenery, to be quite honest. Online friends I know who are quite vested in FFXIV have told me that levels 0-50 are a bad grind, but that the game truly shines at those later levels, which ultimately makes sense to me, but isn't really a deal-breaker.

consider 1-49 to be an extended basic tutorial/storyline build up, the game play for every job changes substantially at level 50, and again at 60 with the expansion.

Is what they are saying true? Should I expect to be less than entertained until level 50+? Are there highlights before then?

Depends on how much you like story content in MMO, and other type of contents like gathering/crafting or other non-battle contents like golden saucer etc. There are plenty to keep people entertained, but that depends on each player.

What keeps you guys playing at the later levels once you've reached max level/max gear/beat all dungeons/etc? Having played Destiny avidly with him for quite some time, I can say with certainty that what we're looking for could be summarized as:

Challenge
Collection
Reoccurring

I think in that case you'll be just fine.

We definitely like to be challenged with difficult encounters, and I'm well aware from friends of how difficult certain later bosses can be. Do only certain bosses feature this? Or can you "turn up the difficulty" of all bosses to increase the challenge?

In all honesty, expect the difficult challenge from the endgame raid only. For the 2.0 era that is the Binding Coils of Bahamut, and for 3.0 it'll be Alexander hard mode in another 2 weeks.

We like to collect things, which is obviously something totally possible in an mmo. Are "important-item"drop rates guaranteed, or are they rare and random? Are these sorts of things found only in dungeons, or in other activities?

A bit of both, in Coil drops are guaranteed, but what actually drops is random. We don't know how the drops will be handled in Alex HM yet.

We also like things that are periodic and reoccurring; things like events with special rewards you can participate in when they happen to show up, so that we have something to anticipate popping up again while we continue to play other aspects of the game.

There are seasonal events all the time.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Asuras

I'm on a quest guys, to get a better opinion on FFXIV. I recently downloaded and played the FFXIV free demo (14 day trial, level 20 cap), though I'm still only level 16. A friend and I, both quite interested in more multiplayer games to play together besides Destiny 24/7, considered FFXIV but are still put off by the pricing. Essentially, we want to know what it's worth..

Is what they are saying true? Should I expect to be less than entertained until level 50+? Are there highlights before then?.

Well to some degree yes, the content is intentional designed on scalar difficulty curve for the level content. Generally til pre-30 it's pretty easy, post 30 it really starts to ramp up more and more til 50.

Originally Posted by Asuras

What keeps you guys playing at the later levels once you've reached max level/max gear/beat all dungeons/etc?

Challenging encounter (SE has a great content cycle time thus far), farming certain content for mounts, pets, or glamors. Max gearing the other classes I enjoy, and experience high difficulty content as roles outside of my primary one, since tanking, dpsing, and healing a challenging fight tend to be different experiences.

Originally Posted by Asuras

We definitely like to be challenged with difficult encounters, and I'm well aware from friends of how difficult certain later bosses can be. Do only certain bosses feature this? Or can you "turn up the difficulty" of all bosses to increase the challenge?

Pretty all the raid tiers and EX fights are very challenging generally, especially if you choose to turn it up with the new Heavensward feature "minimal IL" this allows you to put your party at the minimal required gear & level needed to clear a fight, ie giving you a similar experience to how tough it was on release generally (turning off the "Echo" buff too naturally), which is available for any piece for group content in the game.

Originally Posted by Asuras

We like to collect things, which is obviously something totally possible in an mmo. Are "important-item"drop rates guaranteed, or are they rare and random? Are these sorts of things found only in dungeons, or in other activities?

Important as in "Mounts", "Minions", "Cards", or "Housing Materials" tend to be rare unlike gear itself which can be cruel on RNG but generally isn't rare.

Originally Posted by Asuras

We also like things that are periodic and reoccurring; things like events with special rewards you can participate in when they happen to show up, so that we have something to anticipate popping up again while we continue to play other aspects of the game.

Well they're the seasonal and other rare events for non-serious rewards gear for either seasonal themed gear, or rewarded themed towards the game the event was related to.

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

That "The Vault" cutscene tho....... Wow... I don't think I've ever got those type of feels in any other MMO.

While I did feel it there...

Spoiler for Later major storyline spoilers lvl59+:

Spoiler for Azys Lla related, do not click if you haven't been there or you risk huge spoiling:

I felt it way more personally in the cutscene for the entering Azys Lla for Ysayle, we lost her as soon as she really found the way and we were powerless to stop it, and at least he got properly honored and a memorial grave, We weren't even allowed a moment of grieving for her because of how urge things were, and she was given no grave or such things because she wasn't part of the city, I really hope she gets honored in some way later :/.

[Hooves]

After running through the first part of Alexander raid. I'll just say healers aren't going to have a fun time with it Especially the 4th part, that fight is a nightmare.

[Alchemist007]

I feel like the story of Alex wasn't as interesting as coil, at least not yet. Difficulty is about on par with CT, which is trivial. Savage might be interesting but all of a sudden I'm not feeling like rushing my crafters to 60 anymore to get max meldable gear

[Key Board]

I'm clearly not as good as you, but I'd say that was certainly harder that Crystal Tower and Bismarck EX

[Alchemist007]

Well only did it with my static, maybe what I mean is it's as easy to pug CT as it is to do Alex with them
If that's your experience though I don't know if I want to pug it at all now.

[Flying Dagger]

Normal mode alex is easy as long as people understand mechanics.

However, there are still a lot of things I do not fully understand/see the complexity of which makes me fear savage.

Take Turn 2 for example. Loads of adds. We cheated with 2x SMN AoEing everything down. In savage mode, I will probably need a much more clearer understanding of what each of the mobs do (for example, sometimes they are anti-physical shielded, sometimes anti-magic shielded: does an add need to be tanked away? Maybe it just forces you to have 1 caster 1 melee out of walkers). The walker themselves can get pretty complicated too! You want to keep up debuff stacks on things using minimal amounts of energy, drag bombs away, and recharge in time. All of these are things we can get away from in normal mode.

I expect t4 savage to be essentially the same fight but just everything hits harder. What if say, the orbs debuff you (think t13) so you can only soak 2 maximum? No more having the OT run around eating balls all day.

Then there is the DPS check: so far I see no real enrage in the Alex fights (I guess in T2 you can get overrun). If in savage DPS checks are implemented it will make the fight so much harder...

[MeoTwister5]

Cleared floors 1-3 on my first try and even snagged a Spring on the 3rd.

Floor 4 on the other hand sweet jesus god phase 3 is a nightmare. Spent 2 hours on it to no avail lol.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

if you choose to turn it up with the new Heavensward feature "minimal IL" this allows you to put your party at the minimal required gear & level needed to clear a fight, ie giving you a similar experience to how tough it was on release

That's what it says and that's what I expected until I actually tried it.

I went with my party to do some titan extreme with minimal IL and it turned out we were all synched to ilvl 67!!!

That's not the same experience as people had on release by a long shot. Nobody even tried it with less than ilvl80 and most waited ilvl 85. 67 is the ilvl people went in to kill Titan Hard not Extreme. Tank aparts everyone was below 4k HP.

This seems to be an option for hardcore players only.

[Pocari_Sweat]

Titan EX as i67...

You know just before HW when ppl were decked as i120, people were still failing that...

[Hooves]

Titan EX is basically just one big check that if you mess up mechanics you're doneso. Took me a good 10-15 tries with pugs to finally get him down.

[MeoTwister5]

Right now I'm not exactly sure why floor 4 is considered to be as hard as it is. 1-3 are easy facerolling, but almost everyone screws up at phase 3. I'm seeing DPS get blamed for it a lot.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

I feel like the story of Alex wasn't as interesting as coil, at least not yet. Difficulty is about on par with CT, which is trivial. Savage might be interesting but all of a sudden I'm not feeling like rushing my crafters to 60 anymore to get max meldable gear

I got the feeling Alex HM might be a continuation of the story started in normal mode, but yea, as it is it feels more like a prologue than anything else.

Difficulty wise it's nowhere near as easy as CT. CT is something you can clear while watching Netflix on a separate monitor and eating dinner while being half asleep. Alex isn't particularly difficult, but it's not THAT easy.

Nor is there any reason to get 60 crafting if your purpose is to get meldable gear, as there isn't any - the highest you can make is a i160 body glamour piece, complete sets only goes up to i150 for now, so even if you have a stack of tier 5 materias it won't do you any good, the ilvl gap is simply too large, and will remain so until SE releases additional recipes.

Originally Posted by Flying Dagger

Normal mode alex is easy as long as people understand mechanics.

Which automatically rules out at least 50% of the people you'll run into in DF/PF :P

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Right now I'm not exactly sure why floor 4 is considered to be as hard as it is

It requires teamwork and paying attention to what's going on in the field, which remain beyond the grasp of a large number of players, especially in pug groups.

[MeoTwister5]

Well just cleared floor 4. As the posters above me said, as long as the party members take care of adds and break tethers properly it's actually... not that hard. At the very least floor 4 wipes seem to happen primarily when adds aren't split up properly or someone eats too many tethers.

[Alchemist007]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Nor is there any reason to get 60 crafting if your purpose is to get meldable gear, as there isn't any - the highest you can make is a i160 body glamour piece, complete sets only goes up to i150 for now, so even if you have a stack of tier 5 materias it won't do you any good, the ilvl gap is simply too large, and will remain so until SE releases additional recipes.

Red scrips aren't out yet, presumably not until savage. Going to need to be lvl 60 to craft those no doubt.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Red scrips aren't out yet, presumably not until savage. Going to need to be lvl 60 to craft those no doubt.

yea, kinda in a holding pattern to see what SE have planned for crafters, not getting my hopes up as far as making relevant gears go.

...didn't' stop me from getting my DoH to 60 though >.>