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

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scy

Member
You'll get a Caim smiling mask and like it.

L1kqA8t.png
 

Jeels

Member
Same shit happening in 2.0 is not an excuse when everyone hoped that 3.0 would fix it and when it didn't. They're proving time and again that they just can't do a coherent content progression and that they're willing to throw it under the bus for the sake of the gear treadmill. My point is they're not learning.

I'm not even surprised (and I ultimately don't care for gear at all so I'm not salty either), I called it weeks ago.

How can you maintain a subscription based MMO without a treadmill though?

I'm still subbed, but I'm not doing all this "have the best ilvl every patch" stuff anymore. I play for the world/story/friends etc.
 

Village

Member
What I love about this game

Is going on heartfelt missions as a darknight, or heroic ones.

" look the warrior of light clad in all black armor with spikes, glowing red with murderous intent and has a sword with a eyeball. Obviously a hero among all"

the Christmas mission just

" I shall now show you meaning of giving young child"

Just dark looming figure with a bad guy voice with glowing eyes.
 

Dresden

Member
How can you maintain a subscription based MMO without a treadmill though?

It doesn't feel like a well-designed treadmill when a weapon that players slave over for months to finish (I remember looking at relic requirements once I hit 60 and thinking NOPE) is replaced like two weeks after its final form is introduced. Content and gear becoming obsolete is just a part of themepark life, obviously, but it could always be handled better, and letting players feel good about their shiny new BiS toys for a few more weeks before it becomes transmog fodder would be a good decision I think.

And in this case it sounds like just lowering the item level by five would satisfy a good number of people.
 
So guys I'm pretty fuming mad today but errrr maybe it's good they did this? It means I wont touch relic ever again and can play something else. I mean, they won't ever prevent this from happening again and 10 bucks says it happens with the 4.0 relic too.
 
I actually hope that they bring some new form of content besides dungeons/trials.

How about they take this diadem idea and apply it to normal dungeons. Dungeons could be 60 mins and you have that amount of time to complete multiple objectives/bosses. You can stay after you do the bare minimum stuff or stay for more rewards.

Also there's a chance you can run into other 4 man parties that are running through the dungeon. This is basically injecting some PSO2 into the game. Oh and add the potential for random FATES to pop in the dungeon like PSO2's CODEs.

Do the event and your butt doubles in size.

GOAT

New raid written by Yoko Taro.

Your character is deleted at the end and you're automatically unsubbed and banned for life.

I fully expect this if Return to Ivalice is received well.
 

creid

Member
Historically majority of the 10 million people who purchased ARR never made it past level 35.
Historically only 5% of players at most own a house or have rights to anything important in a house, yet it keeps being an important enough feature in every presentation.
Can this "it's just a minority" thing stop already?
There are 6+ million registered accounts, including free trials. How'd you get to 10mm purchasers of ARR?
 

Lanrutcon

Member
EMERGENCY MISSION

OK GUYS, GROUP UP, HERE ARE THE STRATS:

PHASE 1: THERE ARE

...

who pulled?

...

who destroyed a crystal while the adds were up?

...

well, that was our shot at at a 280 gone

<some idiot from the background> 280?!?! LINK PLZ
 
275 relic already ded. Diadem now king.

I'd rather do another Anima than endure Diadem, which sounds (and is) as fun as a kick to the balls. So my SCH Anima is still very much alive and kicking. While I'd rather they didn't knock the Anima off its perch so quickly, it's no real cause for being up in arms and decrying the supposed total waste of your effort to make the weapon in my opinion. I just hope Yoshi-P isn't that insulated that he doesn't take any notice of any reactions today (even the grossly exaggerated ones like one of your posts earlier) and chooses to simply ignore them, because I do agree that people should be concerned about the team's ability to deftly execute gear progression from now on in a way that isn't so ham-fisted.

Oh, and fuck Diadem.
 

Squishy3

Member
there's multiple levels of rng to getting the 280 weapon anyway

so far it's only dropped into one person's inventory out of the 72 people in diadem per emergency mission (and it needs to drop in the first place)

you also need to hope it's actually for your class

i think this is probably more of an experiment they can do now that the raid cycle is effectively over (probably take whatever criticism this has and apply it to eureka, since that seems to be one of the main features for stormblood?)
 
SO it looks like any unneeded gear you get in Diadem can be traded in for token to buy whatever stuff you actually want.

I kind of liked that even though the armor they have there is outdated but could be used for glamour.
 
You know why it is called Eureka? Because you get too excited to find the relic and then become depressed after the grind invalidates you. Sounds perfect. I probably won't do it after today though. Today was just too much.
 

Seraphis Cain

bad gameplay lol
You know why it is called Eureka? Because you get too excited to find the relic and then become depressed after the grind invalidates you. Sounds perfect. I probably won't do it after today though. Today was just too much.

I'm gonna do some more tomorrow to get the ~30 or so more brass spoils I need for the Pegasus mount, then I think I'm out too.
 

TheChaos0

Member
Might as well give an update. Got to 46! Which means I can do MSQ again starting with 42 ones but also means I'm rewatching all the cutscenes again. Can't remember what's going on with the story aside from that I was chasing the damned crystals for agggeessss.
 

iammeiam

Member
Apparently the chance to get a weapon is 0.1%.
And the stats are random so I guess the chance of getting something usable is even lower.

I sincerely hope they bump that. The horse is out of the barn, they exist. Extreme RNG helps nobody and is going to flat out punish more casual players who have fewer jobs leveled and less time to invest into stupid infinite RNG grinds. in between the bouts of "no seriously why? Is this because we were asking how they'd top the proto ultima implementation?" I get sidetracked wondering why the drop scheme is so godawful. It helps literally nobody.
 
One thing that I've always disliked is how challenging solo content is non-existent in this game.

Even in stuff like job quests they need to put a person in there to heal you because jobs aren't really built to function in solo content (I guess healers can just heal forever), just in group stuff with tank/healer/dps.

The chances of getting something like Mushin's Tower for example is 0% because of the way the combat is designed.

I really liked how B&S was built to function solo and in groups. In groups you had support abilities that helped everyone in addition to stuff like being able to coordinate status effects on bosses (seems like every boss is immune to status effects in FFXIV outside of a few in ARR IIRC, I guess they couldn't figure out a way to make it work in the current system).

What I didn't like about B&S was how you were essentially forced to grind a relic weapon as your main weapon. I'd argue that B&S is more final fantasy like since you can make any group comp you want and do whatever just like in the old games where you could choose whatever jobs you wanted for your group and didn't require a dedicated healer.

My dream MMO would be Final Fantasy with Blade and Soul combat and content.
 

Squishy3

Member
I sincerely hope they bump that. The horse is out of the barn, they exist. Extreme RNG helps nobody and is going to flat out punish more casual players who have fewer jobs leveled and less time to invest into stupid infinite RNG grinds. in between the bouts of "no seriously why? Is this because we were asking how they'd top the proto ultima implementation?" I get sidetracked wondering why the drop scheme is so godawful. It helps literally nobody.
I mean if we're really going to argue this casuals thing casuals don't need anything more than a 235 weapon and a mix of lore/scripture/pvp gear because they can complete all non-optional hard content with one. MSQ, Alexander, Dun Scaith, Warring Triad.

The real casuals finish the story and then unsub until more story gets added.
 

iammeiam

Member
I mean if we're really going to argue this casuals thing casuals don't need anything more than a 235 weapon because they can complete all non-optional hard content with one. MSQ, Alexander, Dun Scaith, Warring Triad.

The real casuals finish the story and then unsub until more story gets added. Like, even if capping scripture a week isn't very much effort, I wouldn't really classify someone in Scripture/Augmented Scripture as a casual other than the definition that separates them from someone doing Savage, since it's 14 weeks to get one class fully decked out with 450 weekly capped.

This is where terminology gets weird because I know people who play daily, raid, and consider themselves fairly casual. I know people who have basically raidlogged for an extended period and clocked minimal hours that get considered hardcore. I'm mostly using casual here as a standin for whatever group of people I'm theoretically supposed to be trying to deny fancy weapons, but I don't have any restrictions on who counts because my gear status interest begins and ends with people I do things with and things that directly impact what we try to do.

Part of the basic feedback loop is character progression, though, and weapon progression sucks right now. Whatever you want to term long-term playing non-raiders who find relic too tedious to do--those people are in a really weird spot since there's no reason they shouldn't have 270 weapons at this point. Diadem adds 280 but locked behind a new and different RNG-infested grind. 280 exists. It's here. There's no reason the withhold 270 at this point; it's clearly not about protecting people's sense of investment in their relics.
 
Anyone want to explain how FFXI did the horizontal progression thing?

Apparently this applied to the content you did too (which from my impression was more than just trials and dungeons).

I'll also ask this, for people who played FFXI, do you find its combat more fun than FFXIV or is FFXIV more enjoyable?
 

wamberz1

Member
Just tried Diadem after a 11 hour work day, was pretty fun. Got a nice 265 monk hat.

Oh shit these brass things give you free materia? sweeeeet.
 
Anyone want to explain how FFXI did the horizontal progression thing?

Apparently this applied to the content you did too (which from my impression was more than just trials and dungeons).

I'll also ask this, for people who played FFXI, do you find its combat more fun than FFXIV or is FFXIV more enjoyable?

I can't speak to what XI was like in its heyday, but when I tried to start playing it recently to see the story I've heard so much praise for, my primary takeaway was that XI is Boring Tedium: The Game. Slowly trudging over large, ugly, barren fields in search of objectives that are poorly or not at all explained to you is not my idea of fun. It made me appreciate the pleasantness of playing XIV so much more. Definitely two very different games, at any rate.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
One thing that I've always disliked is how challenging solo content is non-existent in this game.

Even in stuff like job quests they need to put a person in there to heal you because jobs aren't really built to function in solo content (I guess healers can just heal forever), just in group stuff with tank/healer/dps.

The chances of getting something like Mushin's Tower for example is 0% because of the way the combat is designed.

I really liked how B&S was built to function solo and in groups. In groups you had support abilities that helped everyone in addition to stuff like being able to coordinate status effects on bosses (seems like every boss is immune to status effects in FFXIV outside of a few in ARR IIRC, I guess they couldn't figure out a way to make it work in the current system).

What I didn't like about B&S was how you were essentially forced to grind a relic weapon as your main weapon. I'd argue that B&S is more final fantasy like since you can make any group comp you want and do whatever just like in the old games where you could choose whatever jobs you wanted for your group and didn't require a dedicated healer.

My dream MMO would be Final Fantasy with Blade and Soul combat and content.
If you want hard solo content go to PotD solo and try to get past the 100th floor.

For some reason I decided to get both the 50th and 100th floor solo achievements (no death 1-100 run required for the latter) and it was the most fun I've had in this game. The spetacle of dungeons, raids etc. is neat but it gets old after 1-2 clears. PotD on the other hand requires you to use all the tools at your disposal. Only downside is that you might get screwed if you're unlucky, but I think it's still worth it.

As for Diadem, while I couldn't care less about what's BiS, I tried it yesterday expecting a jump in quality like between potd 1-50 and 51+. After 30 minutes I left and I probably won't go back unless I'm really bored, since I didn't find any part of it (when playing with randoms) appealing.

In more positive news, the boost mode on PS4 Pro really makes the whole thing run match better. So glad we have that bandaid before the real PS4 Pro patch.
 

ebil

Member
Anyone want to explain how FFXI did the horizontal progression thing?

Apparently this applied to the content you did too (which from my impression was more than just trials and dungeons).

I'll also ask this, for people who played FFXI, do you find its combat more fun than FFXIV or is FFXIV more enjoyable?
First thing to know is that FF11's level cap remained at 75 for years, spanning several expansions. This was when the game was at its peak. Second thing to know it that FF11 had gear swapping during battle as a game mechanic. You would be wearing one set of gear while building up your TP, switch to something else entirely when performing Weapon Skills, or spells, then revert back to your TP build (as a result your character would often look like a blinking Christmas tree while fighting).

As you could gear swap during combat, you would build your character with a patchwork of pieces of equipment in mind. Some of it was relatively low level, some of it was near level cap. Gear level didn't matter a whole lot like it does in modern MMOs. Some pieces of Artifact Gear that you got from 50 to 60 would still regularly be used at cap (as they had effects that specifically enhanced some of your job strengths, such as Fast Cast). One of the best weapons for BRD for a very long time was a level 17 staff that dropped from a low level Notorious Monster. Most sought-after pieces weren't just stat sticks, they actually had traits that enhanced your skills.

FF11 regularly introduced new types of content that would reward you (usually via drops or quests) with gear that would range from trash to situationally extremely powerful. Gear could drop from Notorious Monsters, BCNMs (basically trials), expansion MSQ (finishing the main story was actually difficult and often rewarded you with a very powerful item) to more elaborate events such as Dynamis, Sky and Sea (two expansion endgame zones with a network of NMs with obscure spawn conditions), Nyzul Isle etc. Some of it was guided, some of it was obfuscated. Some of it was solo while some of it was alliance content. Some pieces of gear were crafted. As such, the pool of gear that was available to you at level 75 kept growing for years. This is horizontal progression. You almost never replaced one piece of gear with a slightly better piece of gear forever.

I really liked the combat for what it was at the time but it definitely was planning-heavy. And Internet connections weren't as good anyway. Being able to chat or make myself a sandwich while building TP on my DRG was nice. FF11 was quite creative with the way it did content, though. I miss that.
 

Qvoth

Member
the weapon drop rate is 0.1%? shieet
guess i'll just get it for glamour i guess, i doubt i'd be lucky enough to get something with good stat rolls
 

Cmagus

Member
Just cleared the emergency mission but no weapon drops for anyone unfortunately. It was surprisingly challenging considering most people bail already after the 3 main missions are done. Having less people though made the giant room blast from Buer really tough because there wasn't enough people to stand in the circles.
 

kagamin

Member
Trying to learn Zurvan EX in PF, once most parties figure out soar, it seems that they have problems with Southern Cross I've found, of course the few I tried had Rage quits after the first few wipes which is somewhat baffling for a learning party if they're not providing an actual reason.
 
I can't speak to what XI was like in its heyday, but when I tried to start playing it recently to see the story I've heard so much praise for, my primary takeaway was that XI is Boring Tedium: The Game. Slowly trudging over large, ugly, barren fields in search of objectives that are poorly or not at all explained to you is not my idea of fun. It made me appreciate the pleasantness of playing XIV so much more. Definitely two very different games, at any rate.

Just from watching videos I get the impression it's the kind of the game that was fun at the time but doesn't age well in regards to combat/visuals. There are games I loved a long time ago that I probably wouldn't want to play through if I were to play them again today.

FFXI really strikes me as that sort of game.

If you want hard solo content go to PotD solo and try to get past the 100th floor.

For some reason I decided to get both the 50th and 100th floor solo achievements (no death 1-100 run required for the latter) and it was the most fun I've had in this game. The spetacle of dungeons, raids etc. is neat but it gets old after 1-2 clears. PotD on the other hand requires you to use all the tools at your disposal. Only downside is that you might get screwed if you're unlucky, but I think it's still worth it.

As for Diadem, while I couldn't care less about what's BiS, I tried it yesterday expecting a jump in quality like between potd 1-50 and 51+. After 30 minutes I left and I probably won't go back unless I'm really bored, since I didn't find any part of it (when playing with randoms) appealing.

In more positive news, the boost mode on PS4 Pro really makes the whole thing run match better. So glad we have that bandaid before the real PS4 Pro patch.

I might try going through PotD solo now that you mention it. I do wish we had more than just PotD though, like maybe in job quests or something but I figure they want everyone to be able to get new job abilities so they keep them easy.

First thing to know is that FF11's level cap remained at 75 for years, spanning several expansions. This was when the game was at its peak. Second thing to know it that FF11 had gear swapping during battle as a game mechanic. You would be wearing one set of gear while building up your TP, switch to something else entirely when performing Weapon Skills, or spells, then revert back to your TP build (as a result your character would often look like a blinking Christmas tree while fighting).

As you could gear swap during combat, you would build your character with a patchwork of pieces of equipment in mind. Some of it was relatively low level, some of it was near level cap. Gear level didn't matter a whole lot like it does in modern MMOs. Some pieces of Artifact Gear that you got from 50 to 60 would still regularly be used at cap (as they had effects that specifically enhanced some of your job strengths, such as Fast Cast). One of the best weapons for BRD for a very long time was a level 17 staff that dropped from a low level Notorious Monster. Most sought-after pieces weren't just stat sticks, they actually had traits that enhanced your skills.

FF11 regularly introduced new types of content that would reward you (usually via drops or quests) with gear that would range from trash to situationally extremely powerful. Gear could drop from Notorious Monsters, BCNMs (basically trials), expansion MSQ (finishing the main story was actually difficult and often rewarded you with a very powerful item) to more elaborate events such as Dynamis, Sky and Sea (two expansion endgame zones with a network of NMs with obscure spawn conditions), Nyzul Isle etc. Some of it was guided, some of it was obfuscated. Some of it was solo while some of it was alliance content. Some pieces of gear were crafted. As such, the pool of gear that was available to you at level 75 kept growing for years. This is horizontal progression. You almost never replaced one piece of gear with a slightly better piece of gear forever.

I really liked the combat for what it was at the time but it definitely was planning-heavy. And Internet connections weren't as good anyway. Being able to chat or make myself a sandwich while building TP on my DRG was nice. FF11 was quite creative with the way it did content, though. I miss that.

Thanks for the explanation. It sounds more interesting than FFXIV's throwaway system (well I guess there's glamour). The gearset switching thing might not go over too well in FFXIV but I figure there's probably something they could have done to make the gear in FFXIV more than just stats but that ship has probably sailed by now.

Now that I think about it Guild Wars had an early level cap at 20 which stayed for all of its expansions. In that game though the way to expand was done through learning skills instead of gear, since your 8 skill slots could be filled with whatever you wanted. The skills were all situational so you weren't just using all the skills from the latest expansion but creating skill builds depending on what you were fighting. I liken it to building a Magic: The Gathering deck.
 

Valor

Member
Meh. These 280 weapons don't strike me as being worthwhile to try and acquire at all. Layered RNG is pretty laughable too. I wonder why they felt this was a good idea.
 

ebil

Member
My guess is that they're testing the waters for implementing (potentially) extremely powerful pieces of gear with a very low droprate, which is something a subset of the playerbase has been asking for.

After all, Yoshida said that Eureka wouldn't be for everyone. It's probably going to be Grind City.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Can we get another deep dungeon with cooler layouts? I want them to expand on that.
 
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