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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT2| RIP Bowmage 2015-2017.

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Kenai

Member
Why is everyone laughing at me... :(

There is really a key item that will point you to aethercurrents and it's in fact a compass.

I would complain a lot about the ones hidden behind sidequests but I think they fixed that? Or if they didn't I don't think they will do it again.
 

duckroll

Member
Speaking of which, my entire hotbar layout is still fucking terrible after almost 160 hours. I'm really bad at this MMO thing. Any time you give me a customizable UI, and I can't do anything. I need well designed UI out of the box. :(

Anyone have good recommendations for Dragoon hotbar setups for a lvl57? I find that basically everything in terms of management, I'm a mess at. I'm using the default two hotbar setup, I have all my active rotation skills on bar 1 so I can use the number keys to cycle, while I have the other skills for cooldown phases on the top bar (2) which I... errr... manually click on as needed. Sometimes I miss cycles because I lose track of my mouse cursor in the process. I use right-click hold to rotate the camera, and WASD to move. I have basically run out of hotbar slots for mounts/items/limitbreak/etc, and just throw them on another empty bar to toggle to if I remember to. Yeah....

I think I'm really bad at this and my control scheme just barely gets me through the game. So I'm going to eat the embarrassment and just ask for advice. :(
 

Qvoth

Member
no point in messing with hotbars now considering your rotation will change in 3 weeks
pretty sure my hotbar setup is shit too but muscle memory just takes over and everything becomes ok
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
Speaking of which, my entire hotbar layout is still fucking terrible after almost 160 hours. I'm really bad at this MMO thing. Any time you give me a customizable UI, and I can't do anything. I need well designed UI out of the box. :(

Anyone have good recommendations for Dragoon hotbar setups for a lvl57? I find that basically everything in terms of management, I'm a mess at. I'm using the default two hotbar setup, I have all my active rotation skills on bar 1 so I can use the number keys to cycle, while I have the other skills for cooldown phases on the top bar (2) which I... errr... manually click on as needed. Sometimes I miss cycles because I lose track of my mouse cursor in the process. I use right-click hold to rotate the camera, and WASD to move. I have basically run out of hotbar slots for mounts/items/limitbreak/etc, and just throw them on another empty bar to toggle to if I remember to. Yeah....

I think I'm really bad at this and my control scheme just barely gets me through the game. So I'm going to eat the embarrassment and just ask for advice. :(
I usually use 3 hotbars - first set to 1-0, second to shift+1-0 and the third to ctrl + 1~0.
I have big hands, but I use mostly 1-6 buttons on all 3 hotbars, so 7-0 have items with long cooldowns, chocobo stuff, food etc.

Q and E for panic buttons like sprint etc.
 

Squishy3

Member
For the second bar I use ctrl 1-5 for the first 5 buttons and shift 1-5 for the other 5 so I never have to reach past 5 while holding a modifier (as that is painful on the hand.)

Maybe go hunting around for screenshots of other people's UI setups and you might be able to figure out how you want yours to be set up. Also, you can make any bar visible by right clicking it when in the HUD layout screen, so you don't need to switch to them, and then drag them to places where you can see them, as well as resize them with ctrl+home. (For example my #1 hotbar is absolutely tiny as I have it in muscle memory 100%) I don't remember where it is off the top of my head but there's an option in character config somewhere to change the way bars are aligned so they can be in a 3x3 grid or some other layouts.

I've been needing to redo my hotbar but I'll just take the time to completely redo them during early access since stuff is changing so much. I set up 3x3 grid like hotbars before they actually let you make any individual hotbar a 3x3 grid, so I'd have to go and remap a bunch of things if I changed it now and my muscle memory's already used to the way I have it now.
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
Well hot damn the story leading up to SB is pretty damn interesting.

If you would have told me that during any of 2.0 I would have never believed you.

I'm up to Baelsar's Wall dungeon, about to start that up in just a sec.
 

Sorian

Banned
Well hot damn the story leading up to SB is pretty damn interesting.

If you would have told me that during any of 2.0 I would have never believed you.

I'm up to Baelsar's Wall dungeon, about to start that up in just a sec.

Oh man, so you haven't even seen the best bits.
 

iammeiam

Member
People generally seem happy with the 3.x story.

In terms of just going through the patches, 3.x is considerably less annoying and time-wastey than 2.x was. No finding orphans/uniform delivery/recruiting dudes for a thing/blahblahblahblahblah.

It's a l o t shorter; 44 post-3.0 quests compared to 100 post-2.0 quests.
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
Is 3.x better than 2.x? Because 2.x was filled with cheap-ish troll crap.

After just going through it, I wasn't a fan of the 2.x quests, but I did enjoy the cutscenes of it.

3.x literally cuts all the filler out and just leaves the interesting bits, it also has a lot more voice acting too. It's way better.
 
After just going through it, I wasn't a fan of the 2.x quests, but I did enjoy the cutscenes of it.

3.x literally cuts all the filler out and just leaves the interesting bits, it also has a lot more voice acting too. It's way better.

Sounds like Stormblood will have more voice acting in it than Heavensward did too. Exciting!
 

yami4ct

Member
Speaking of which, my entire hotbar layout is still fucking terrible after almost 160 hours. I'm really bad at this MMO thing. Any time you give me a customizable UI, and I can't do anything. I need well designed UI out of the box. :(

Anyone have good recommendations for Dragoon hotbar setups for a lvl57? I find that basically everything in terms of management, I'm a mess at. I'm using the default two hotbar setup, I have all my active rotation skills on bar 1 so I can use the number keys to cycle, while I have the other skills for cooldown phases on the top bar (2) which I... errr... manually click on as needed. Sometimes I miss cycles because I lose track of my mouse cursor in the process. I use right-click hold to rotate the camera, and WASD to move. I have basically run out of hotbar slots for mounts/items/limitbreak/etc, and just throw them on another empty bar to toggle to if I remember to. Yeah....

I think I'm really bad at this and my control scheme just barely gets me through the game. So I'm going to eat the embarrassment and just ask for advice. :(


It's not gonna be the answer you want to hear I'm sure (because it was never the answer I wanted to hear when I looked up this question), but just speaking from personal anecdote I never felt truly comfortable with my dragoon rotation until I got an MMO mouse. Even after 100s of hours and a level 60, I just couldn't get a flow to it and I'd always end up dropping combos/BotD because of it and hampering my DPS. Now that I got my Logitech G600, though, after a couple hours of relearning muscle memory I'm hitting what I need to hit like 90% of the time and just generally feel way more solid. But, just some things you can look at to make your keyboard rotation more solid, here's some quick points.

1)Try to keep things keyed to 1-5 at the very most. I find that the shifting you have to do with your hand beyond that makes you incredibly liable to drop combos. Personally I would map your Chaos thrust combo and either wheeling thrust or Fang and Claw to 1-4 and then map the Full Thrust plus other 4th tier to a modifier key (Whichever is most comfortable for you to hit)+1-4.
2) The F keys work decently well for your OGC like jumps and other auras so don't be afraid to use them. Again, maybe try to limit yourself to F1-F5 to minimize hand movement
3) Remap any keys close to WASD that aren't 100% necessary for combat further down the keyboard. You don't need autorun in combat, no reason for it to take such a close valuable spot like R. Same for the Q and E strafes. Try remapping them to A and D and see if that clicks with you. That opens up those two keys as well for more quick hit options. Q and E are probably best used for actions you need to mix in your combos frequently, so like Heavy Thrust and Phelobotomize.
4) If you have extra mouse buttons, make sure to use them. My pre-G600 had two thumb buttons and a click wheel button. I personally really liked having BOTD on the wheel and F&C and WT on the thumb keys. If you have those keys, that would open up your 4 key slot for something else useful.

I can't stress enough how much I personally found the G600 mouse to be a much more playable way to use my dragoon as it allowed me to engage and combat and move much more seamlessly, but people clearly get along fine with just M+K so if you don't want to go that far I get it. In the end, it's all about finding something that you can drill into your muscle memory and react to quickly without leaving the movement keys for too long.
 

Xux

Member
Chamber seven, baby. Feels good. Trees fer days.

Also, boy is it rough trying to pick back up MCH after a long break. Kinda glad it seems be getting simplified.
 

mstevens

Member
Thinking about starting back up in this game. I played a lot in Vanilla, but haven't touched in since then. Almost feel like starting a brand new character and focusing more on the story this go-round.

Is there a gaf server / company?
 

Redx508

Member
Thinking about starting back up in this game. I played a lot in Vanilla, but haven't touched in since then. Almost feel like starting a brand new character and focusing more on the story this go-round.

Is there a gaf server / company?

yep the fc is on the Ultros server more info on the OP
 

Wagram

Member
Finally caught up with the main story. Some interesting developments for sure.

Glad a certain specific character finally has some real backstory and a spotlight.
 
Is 3.x better than 2.x? Because 2.x was filled with cheap-ish troll crap.

Much better but then again there are not much people who like the story in this game. It's all about mindlessly grinding content for gear sets. 3.0 is pretty great. It's honestly better than ARR in every way. I'd rate it probably an 8/10 but then again don't expect Persona 5 levels of good in the story. Heavensward is extremely predictable and that's a major flaw about it, imo. Ishgard in itself is gorgeous at first but it will get old fast.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
I thought only 3.3 was actually any good. Straight to the point, cool and dramatic. 3.1-3.2 were padding and 3.4-3.5 were so predictable at every "twist" it was kind of amazing.

Except for the date with Alisaie. That was 10/10.
 

Meciu

Member
I don't think the problem is exploration, but rather how it is presented. If the game offers some sort of compass to detect currents and it encourages you to actually explore and follow cues to tune each one, that would be great. As it in though, it's just another mundane checklist item which shows up in a menu, and after you attune all the ones you managed to spot while playing normally, the majority of players will check a guide to fill in the gaps to waste the least amount of time. There's no way at all to tell where the ones you missed might have been, and without flying in HW zones, traversal is definitely less than ideal.

I don't think aether currents are particularly frustrating, I just think they're just another feature that adds time wasting elements to the game as filler without actually being a substantial benefit to the game experience. Along with how the majority of quests are designed and the endgame grind, it all adds up.

Lindsay-Lohan-Spits-Out-Drink.gif


Hahahahahaha, amazing! Late to the party but You made my day duckroll.
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Much better but then again there are not much people who like the story in this game.
Would be surprised if that were actually were the case. If there's one common piece of praise for this game I see on GAF all the time, it's the story and the story focus.
 
Would be surprised if that were actually were the case. If there's one common piece of praise for this game I see on GAF all the time, it's the story and the story focus.

It might just be on my side then but I have never seen the story talked about ever on my server or well never in depth that is. People dont seem to care on there. The official forums have had their share of complaints about the story as well but I haven't really seen the story praised highly outside here. I guess it's just cause i'm on a low pop server but it just doesn't seem like anybody ever talks about it in game. Also, I have a ton of friends and know people in game that skip all cutscenes... only 2 or so that actually watch them. Colour me shocked when I heard this.... Our lore discussions tend to be derailed by other things.

It could be just me but that's just my general input on the story from what I have seen from others. FFXIV is a brilliant story but I feel nothing but raiding or whoever has the highest dps gets talked about on my server. But yeah... I mean I know people care about endgame more but the story needs a fair share of love as well.
 
It might just be on my side then but I have never seen the story talked about ever on my server or well never in depth that is. People dont seem to care on there. The official forums have had their share of complaints about the story as well but I haven't really seen the story praised highly outside here. I guess it's just cause i'm on a low pop server but it just doesn't seem like anybody ever talks about it in game. Also, I have a ton of friends and know people in game that skip all cutscenes... only 2 or so that actually watch them. Colour me shocked when I heard this.... Our lore discussions tend to be derailed by other things.

It could be just me but that's just my general input on the story from what I have seen from others. FFXIV is a brilliant story but I feel nothing but raiding or whoever has the highest dps gets talked about on my server. But yeah... I mean I know people care about endgame more but the story needs a fair share of love as well.

Whenever a new patch comes out people are chomping at the bit to do the latest MSQ stuff. I always see excitement for the story on here, reddit, ingame, etc.

Also stuff typically doesn't get discussed in all chat because of spoilers. I turn off all chat anyway just in case until I finish the latest story stuff.
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
It might just be on my side then but I have never seen the story talked about ever on my server or well never in depth that is. People dont seem to care on there. The official forums have had their share of complaints about the story as well but I haven't really seen the story praised highly outside here. I guess it's just cause i'm on a low pop server but it just doesn't seem like anybody ever talks about it in game. Also, I have a ton of friends and know people in game that skip all cutscenes... only 2 or so that actually watch them. Colour me shocked when I heard this.... Our lore discussions tend to be derailed by other things.

It could be just me but that's just my general input on the story from what I have seen from others. FFXIV is a brilliant story but I feel nothing but raiding or whoever has the highest dps gets talked about on my server. But yeah... I mean I know people care about endgame more but the story needs a fair share of love as well.

Hm story gets mentioned a good bit on my server.

In all honestly, I'm much more into this story than Persona 5's, I'm only like 10 hours in P5 though so obviously that could change.

The only bad thing about 14s story is that the budget doesn't allow for excellent cutscenes which makes things feel slower than they should, and some voice acting is a bit... eeeeh!!!!

The plot itself is pretty damn good though and has really kept me intrigued post 2.0. Everything before that was filler trash though. Damn shame because that'll turn a lot of people off.
 

iammeiam

Member
Both GAF and Reddit are pretty well populated with people who will insist if you're not an FF fan and interested in the FF story of this primarily FF RPG you have no business playing it because it's not for you.

I'm happy skipping cutscenes and waiting for other people to watch. Periodically I'll try watching a cutscene or reading a story summary to gauge if I've started caring recently, and it's usually a resounding no, but at no point have I ever had any delusions about my position as in the minority when it comes to my lack of interest in the story.

But realistically, and everything I've seen backs this up, the way story is handed out by the game isn't conducive to constant discussions over long spans of time. You'll get a major amount of discussion in the immediate aftermath of an expansion, as a lot of story happens then, but it'll be kept to more private channels as people will blow through the MSQ at their own pace and nobody wants to spoilers. After that, it's basically a small shot in the arm every few months which will sustain discussion for a week or two, but it'll fade after that until the next MSQ patch. A lot of people love it, but it's very static and on a fixed schedule when there'll be anything new to discuss.

Raiding/the gear grind/being the most impressive numbers will get talked about because the game is structured to keep that in flux for much longer. The gearing up process takes a while, clearing stuff will take a while. That remains dynamic and changing, and so it becomes the focus of discussion a lot of the time because there's only so much to be said until the next story patch.
 
Both GAF and Reddit are pretty well populated with people who will insist if you're not an FF fan and interested in the FF story of this primarily FF RPG you have no business playing it because it's not for you.

This is probably why I haven't gotten into any other MMOs because I'm not normally that kind of person, but personally I can't understand what Final Fantasy XIV has to offer for people who don't like its story and world. From a purely mechanical standpoint it's OK, but just crunching the numbers in itself doesn't seem interesting enough to hold my attention for long.
 

duckroll

Member
I'm glad everyone is getting a kick out of my stupidity regarding Aether Currents and it brightened your day. At least it had a small benefit somewhere. :)

Much better but then again there are not much people who like the story in this game. It's all about mindlessly grinding content for gear sets.

??????????????????????????

The only reason I'm playing this game is for the story and the world...

Duckroll, drop the kb + m combo and join controller PC alliance.

Manage hotbars? Hah, we're beyond such nonsense.

Aeana told me the same thing. I'm going to try it out tonight.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
Duckroll, drop the kb + m combo and join controller PC alliance.

Manage hotbars? Hah, we're beyond such nonsense.
As someone who fairly recently joined the controller PC alliance (because I wanted to have the same controls on PS4 and PC) and it's been pretty great.

In combat.

Outside of battles, having to click a few times to do every simple thing and some other limitations (can you open Inventory and Armory Chest at the same time?) make it a bit of a pain, but I'll take it over carpal tunnel syndrome every day.
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
I'll just give my 2 cents and say to not abandon mouse and keyboard if you ever want to do serious content. Yes it's doable on pad but the extra hand gymnastics and targeting issues are meh

It's wonderful for crafting and gathering though
 

iammeiam

Member
I'll just be contrary and say controller is fine for serious content; you just gotta learn to love your target filters and master manipulating the camera to determine what's in-scope for targeting. It's kind of annoying in 72-man PVP but for like raids and stuff it's NBD. Also legitimately no idea what hand gymnastics are involved. It's just triggers, the D-pad, and face buttons.

This is probably why I haven't gotten into any other MMOs because I'm not normally that kind of person, but personally I can't understand what Final Fantasy XIV has to offer for people who don't like its story and world. From a purely mechanical standpoint it's OK, but just crunching the numbers in itself doesn't seem interesting enough to hold my attention for long.

For me it's mostly the raids at this point. I like the current system of a slower GCD + lots of oGCD stuff, because it always ended up feeling pretty active. Which is part of why the combat revamp has me worried. I like the smaller raid size--Eight people seems manageable to me in a way 20-man fixed size wouldn't be--and part of the tradeoff in having very few challenging bosses means the ones we do get are generally decent spectacle and when they deliver a solid fight, it's incredibly satisfying (I will continue dying on the A3S hill long after everyone has forgotten what it even means.) Undersizing old stuff, later PotD, troll pulling Arges while there's still a bunch of stuff up in Aquapolis and I have no MP to see if we can somehow survive, stupid glamour stuff. Joining groups trying to prog something I know to see if we can make progress and if I can actually explain things better than just "don't die and kill the thing and make sure it dies before we do." There's a bunch of dumb edge stuff I find fun.

The confusion at it has always confused me because the actual story stuff is such a small minority of playtime; if the stuff surrounding it isn't compelling on its own, I'd expect to see a lot more people who only surface for a week or two around patches.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
I'll just give my 2 cents and say to not abandon mouse and keyboard if you ever want to do serious content. Yes it's doable on pad but the extra hand gymnastics and targeting issues are meh

It's wonderful for crafting and gathering though
Only raid content I did was Coil in 2.x and that was with M/KB, but I had no problems with Zurvan/Nidhogg Ex on a controller and I did both while I was still getting used to those controls.
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
I play on controller and do fine. You just got to make sure you adjust your targeting controls and enable your extra hotbars. You can double tap L2/R2 to give you extra buttons or hold them both down to give you more. It's very flexible.
 
Duckroll, drop the kb + m combo and join controller PC alliance.

Manage hotbars? Hah, we're beyond such nonsense.

I tried controller earlier this week because changing positions constantly during battle was causing my left hand to cramp on my smaller laptop keyboard (where I play the majority of the time). It's not an issue when I'm at home with a full sized keyboard. The controller is surprisingly intuitive to use, but alas I did find myself having even more difficulty managing positioning during combat PLUS trying to readjust my brain to new controller layout had me feeling all insecure about my ability to play effectively.

Once 4.0 rolls around and the skill changes are in place, maybe I'll give it a shot with the slightly more streamlined rotation, if there is a notable one at all for MNK.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
I tried controller earlier this week because changing positions constantly during battle was causing my left hand to cramp on my smaller laptop keyboard (where I play the majority of the time). It's not an issue when I'm at home with a full sized keyboard. The controller is surprisingly intuitive to use, but alas I did find myself having even more difficulty managing positioning during combat PLUS trying to readjust my brain to new controller layout had me feeling all insecure about my ability to play effectively.

Once 4.0 rolls around and the skill changes are in place, maybe I'll give it a shot with the slightly more streamlined rotation, if there is a notable one at all for MNK.
I'd recommend starting to get used to it now, even if 4.0 will make the things more streamlined. Stuff like targetting probably won't change and being able to effectively use filters (and navigate outside the world outside of battles) requires some time to get used to.
 
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