Final Fantasy XIV Online | jiggles, Seven and rinks have all returned to Eorzea

[Met]

Wasn't able to play today, but at 83 I can already see bits and pieces of this.

[Hexx]

At level 87 and hell yeah that's true

[D_C]

Let me create my character damnit! I'm guessing I have to resign myself to waiting til the wee hours to get in now?

[jiggles]

Pretty much. Unless they’ve specifically disabled it everywhere during the early access period.

It’ll be hard to find space for a while yet, I would think.

I’m only playing for an hour or two each night and just dinged 81 so this expansion is going to last me ages.

I went with the lads, so I’m enjoying my time tottering around not-Besaid doing really quaint little small time side quests and chatting to all the greennames.

[Hexx]

And that's the MSQ done.

Probably more consistent that Shb - but it never quite hits the same massive high points - it comes close though.

As a single player RPG story though it's pretty satisfying -it's gone full Final Fantasy though, and no one could have predicted the beats of the story. The zones, dungeons and trials are all well designed and different.

There's some visually impressive areas throughout but the last zone/trial is stunning. The skybox and lighting team. So many screenshots taken.

Music is amazing as always. Though a couple of bits are overused (one of the trailer musics is used too much. They obviously saw the reaction to when Shadowbringers kicked in the end of the last expac, but it happiness a lot more here to the point it's almost overused/oversaturated)

Does feel like an "ending" though - curious to see where they go,

[D_C]

I'm up to level 40 after 73 hours. Thoroughly enjoying the grind and getting through the MSQ. Still so much to learn, but I'll get there.

Looking forward to what's to come, knowing teach expansion seems to get better and better reviews.

[jawa_]

Due to the current issues with supporting the number of folk who want to play the game, it has temporarily been removed from sale .

[Met]

This whole thing is wild. It's the second time in like 6 months that they had to stop selling it because of how popular it was.

[jawa_]

I was thinking about getting back into the game on my PS4; I played it for a little bit two or so months ago. I don't think I'll be doing so until the heat dies down a tad, though.

[D_C]

I've got 196 hours logged since starting on 6th Dec And that's with the queues being pretty large still. Finished ARR and nearly done with HW (Only doing MSQ/Job quests and the important side quests first). It really does improve with HW (Not that ARR was that bad, just a few too many fetch quests). So many dungeons I need to go back to as well already.

I've been playing Bard main, as I figured it would be alright for someone new to the genre (Staying away from the brunt of the enemies whilst providing support), but might change it up soon. No idea what to try out next!

[jawa_]

So I have only one request to [all] players out there - please imagine that you're speaking face to face with a developer whom you may not know his name nor face and imagine how they'd feel before sending your feedback over, and I'll be happy if people can do so politely.

Source: Eurogamer

This needed saying. It increasingly feels as if rather too many folk are ready to write the most horribly over-the-top criticism on the internet, safe in the knowledge that there will be few repercussions. Yes, some publishers are their own worst enemies and they do deserve comment and criticism, but not everything needs to be subjected to verbal abuse. Bravo, Yoshida!

[jawa_]

Final Fantasy XIV will return to the PlayStation Store later this month, on the 25th January. What's more, the development team is expanding each of the game's regional data centres, which should help with any future congestion.

Good news! Hopefully the data centres will be able to cope with the increased volume of players.

[Knoyleo]

I fired this back up again recently, and it looks like free trial users now have access to NPC allies for Duty Finder dungeons, which is nice, as while still exploring the story, I can progress at my own pace, rather than having a party who know what they're doing zoom off ahead of me and skip cutscenes.

[jiggles]

I’m also back at it, plugging away at lv83 MSQ. I haven’t quite gotten to the “unbelievable big events” that people were referring to earlier but I do want to know if it’s just that you go to the moon as hinted by the opening trailer?

I did get fed up of my old highlander being “the ugly scion” so I bought some fantasias and I’m now a buniboi. My characters name is too masculine for a female and I wasn’t for paying to change that too, so I was left with with either a default-ass hyur, a furry, a beefcake, yet another elf to add to Estinian, Urianger, Alphinaud and Alisae, or the first Viera in the group.

Easy choice.

[andretmzt]

I fired this back up again recently, and it looks like free trial users now have access to NPC allies for Duty Finder dungeons, which is nice, as while still exploring the story, I can progress at my own pace, rather than having a party who know what they're doing zoom off ahead of me and skip cutscenes.

Or wall to wall pulling on Satasha. Like just chill, we are noobs.

[Knoyleo]

So it turns out, alongside the duty support for story dungeons, apparently patch 6.1 totally rejigged a load of the Realm Reborn dungeons, changing layouts, mob locations, boss mechanics, etc. so they're very different than they were before. I've just gone through levels 40-50 and the end of the ARR MSQ (although I still have the Lahabrea fight to go) and hadn't realised I was getting a totally different experience than it would have been a few months ago. Feels weird, but it sounds like the consensus is that these are all big improvements, so that's cool.

[Met]

Yeah, I haven't done the rejigged Castrum Meridianum dungeon yet, but things have been massively streamlined.

Rhitalyn, or whatever his name is, used to be an 8 man trial and it was a joke. He would die in like 10 seconds as everyone just zerged him down. Now he's an actual fight.

Praetorium and the Ultima fight used to be combined as an 8 man dungeon. And the Praetorium part of it was like twice as long. The bosses were just tank and spanks with no mechanics, but now they're more akin to current fights.

I really like the changes.

[Knoyleo]

Making my way through the post ARR and pre Heavensward patch content, and hoo-boy does it feel like it's taking forever. Lots of the same go there and talk to someone then come back here then go somewhere else again type quests, all building towards mandatory grouped trials or dungeons. The story feels like it's picking back up again now, post Shiva fight, and I've actually enjoyed the trials side of it, tbf, nice quick group sessions, and usually pretty short queue times as a healer, but some of the dungeon runs are a pain. Given that the bulk of the content is just narrative based go here talk to them exposition, I'm finding it convenient to push through by playing during downtime from work. It's just frustrating that story progress then has to come to a grinding halt because now I need to find an uninterrupted half hour or more to go do a group dungeon run. I really am missing the Duty Support system for NPC runs that was available for the main ARR content.

[Met]

ARR patch content definitely suffers from the team finding their footing. Because each primal fight has to be MSQ each patch kind of has to deal with its own thing while also setting up and resolving the primals. Going forward they split the fights and the story so each patch gets to focus purely on its own plot set up with maybe a "by the way, this guy over here is looking for help fighting a series of bosses if you're interested. No rush." to point you there. I feel the flow of the story improves when it gets to be more focused, and you can see it yourself regarding the Shiva stuff: the way it's more integrated rather than "Oh, wait, we need a reason to fight Leviathan now." If that was in Heavensward onwards Shiva would still be an MSQ fight, but Leviathan, Ramuh, and Moggle Mog would have been a series of optional quests to learn about the other tribes, for example.

On the bright side, the post-ARR patch run is generally considered the weakest part, so I'm glad you've pretty much made it.

Unfortunately the queues for dungeons still apply as they're the standard MSQ group content and will pretty much go unchanged up to current patch. At least they're adding the trusts to the mainline ones over time, but it doesn't really help if you're ahead of where they are. I can't remember what currently actually has them, I think it's base ARR, and all of ShB and EW, but up through HW should be dropping very soon.

[Knoyleo]

Yeah, that about lines up with what I've read. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it overall, but the pacing feels odd. Though I do need to keep reminding myself that this was patch content released in batches over 11 months or something, and I'm playing through the lot in the space of a fortnight or something, so of course the pacing feels wrong.

I had a look for other recommended things to do at 50 alongside the MSQ, and I've just started the Hildibrand quest line. It's amazing! It's the kind of tonal shift that I'd expect to see in one of the Yakuza games side quests, and it's the perfect diversion from the more serious MSQ side of things. A little disappointed that Nashu changed out of her inspectors outfit, though.