[SQEX-W5] Desperate Measures - Dawn of a New Era (FFXIV)

Faithless · Wendy's Hole Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: World 1-1

Having played FFXI for years of my life (something I feel guilty about ... or not; I can't even really process it), I appreciate the greater amount of solo content -- and ease of discovering it. I loved XI for running around and looking at stuff and accidentally happening upon a story or quest moment. I HATED partying in that jungle or whatever and killing the same monkey for five hours at a time with a group of people who were angry that they got an Elvaan BLM. Who cares that I was Elvaan? Who cares if you make the next level in an hour or an hour and ten minutes? We were all playing an MMO -- it's a waste of time anyway.

Now that I have to party in FFXIV to keep the story going, I'm dreading it. The mixture of begging for help (/shout Archer looking for group; anyone wanna do It's Probably Pirates?) and anxiety (Fuck, I'm the one who asked these guys to do this run with me; I DON'T WANT TO FUCK UP OR DISCONNECT) is my least favorite thing about the game. Also: I play video games because I have social anxiety, probably. Adding social elements to games ... eesh.
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

bza · Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 10:10 pm

Don't play a healer if you get anxious in parties! I haven't had any super stressful situations yet but awful players tend to blame the healers for everything. At least the story quests only require one run of each dungeon, and some dungeons are purely sidequests. I've heard the story really picks up at lv 35 so I'm looking forward to that!

The long global cooldown definitely sets a slower pace for combat than most but I'm totally cool with that because I don't play online games for super deep combat.
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Faithless · Wendy's Hole Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: World 1-1

I like it when I'm running around and nobody is there.
PS3 version makes me want to get a computer, though.
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

I took almost that same picture:

Something about the limitations of the PS3 version are oddly comforting to me. I'm not ready to play this on a PC and affix crazy hotbars all over my UI. I like doing this from a couch.
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LandRoverAttack · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Location: sagamihara, kanagawa

I've been playing on a PC with 360 controller this whole time, feels great!

game seems basically similar to what it was before + vastly improved engine + incredibly beautiful overhauled world + WoW quest guided tour to 50 - bevy of minor inconveniences

I think I'm going to be playing a while. I wonder if they'll let us transfer away from the legacy servers at some point
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

According to their site, world-transfer to be coming mid-september.
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LandRoverAttack · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Location: sagamihara, kanagawa

Oh, I know. I just wonder if Legacy characters will be allowed to transfer to non-Legacy servers.

We are branded for life, you know.

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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

Dear Lord, why would they not implement AFK timers? Even without overwhelming demand, why allow anyone to consume server space indefinitely?
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BotageL · Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 3:39 pm

Faithless · Wendy's Hole Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: World 1-1

I thought it was a holdover from FFXI, where there were no AFK timers -- and people could set up their mules as little shops. It encourages people to buy more than one account ... which gets SE more money.
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

Servers were full at 7:10am this morning eastern US time. I tried for ten minutes and walked away in disgust. I'm done with playing the login mini-game.

I know I shouldn't have logged out last night, but I wanted to give someone out there a chance at my slot, but also I'm not comfortable leaving my PS3 on that long.
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Faithless · Wendy's Hole Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: World 1-1

"IT WILL ALL BE FIXED TOMORROW" - Square Enix, re: The September Maintenance

Wednesday? "Please Be Patient, we have no idea how to server"
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notbov · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

technically, it's Wednesday Japan Time, which translates to "in the middle of fucking prime time in NA"

but, hey, 7 free days, that's nice considering early access was shorter than that
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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

SO!

Labor Day weekend, so I guess congestion was to be expected. Of course this here is some NEXT LEVEL SHIT but we already knew that so really there's no bitching left to be done. I'm just glad (for once) to be working nights; I can get in my time when everyone else is at work/school. Starting tomorrow of course.

*I actually rolled a diff toon in some random, and gloriously empty, JP server. I seriously considered abandoning my Ultros toon and just doing it up there. Oy vey.
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

I thought the Yoshi interview said that they were considering seven free days?

My current armor set is probably the closest I'll look to a dark souls character in this game (I think it's a little goofy looking actually).

About to hit 30 GLA. I think before I do much else, I'll go level Conjurer to 15, and also get tradecraft class (armorer) up to 30, as long as I have the patience for it (16 now).

I heard if you turn in High Quality items for tradecraft leves (of which I don't seem to have any?), you can get loads of XP.

cheevos.
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bza · Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 11:54 pm

HQ in crafting is the way to go, even if you just attempt to increase quality you get massive XP boosts. Leveling Alchemy a bit last night I got 300% XP for making a pile of HQ potions. It's nice that with Tradecrafts you can make HQ gear for yourself that's better than quest or dungeon rewards! The hard part is finding/buying all the various materials...
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miaou · Joined: 12 Dec 2012

The End of Friendship: The Current State of the MMO - PopMatters

Victor · Joined: 07 Dec 2006

I've always kind of been more interested in the concept of MMOs as big high budget RPGs with a continuous flow of interesting 'content' created by a large perpetually funded team, than MMOs as visual IRC teamwork sim. I mean they don't ever really seem to pan out as the former, though, or even reach toward that goal; and I guess I've had some fun with various free at the moment trash asian MMOs as the latter.

CubaLibre · the road lawyer Joined: 02 Mar 2007 Location: Balmer

Problem with that is, content is meaningless when you can have literally no effect on it. It's nice to have grandiose architecture inhabited by larger than life characters that participate in high melodrama, but it's hard to give a shit when you're going to run the same event next week.
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geinou · Joined: 07 Apr 2010

My new best friend:

GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

Out of curiosity, how did Japan take to FF14 ver.1?

I just wonder if any of these design decisions were made to appease their Japanese audience after a sucky first attempt, or to appease them after losing a game they actually enjoyed, thanks to us meddling kids. Yes I am calling FF14 Japan-centric and my only evidence is the current server distribution.
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| BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | · true doom murderhead Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Austria

Played FFXIV. Today was a good day.

notbov · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

pretty sure that's a criticism re:theme park MMOs, especially in relation to sandbox-y deals

every round of dust has its own little narrative too, but that's its own topic

someone tell me what to go: Scholar or White Mage
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LandRoverAttack · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Location: sagamihara, kanagawa

Scholar seems like a legit healer and not a bad choice. Someone was telling me they knew someone who got great results by microing their fairy, but I don't see how that's possible when you can't give it orders while you cast. But when it's left on its own, it will start spells even when you're casting. So it seems good! And its AI seems pretty good. The support fairy has a 1s silence which I'm sure is meant to interrupt spells, I haven't tested to see how well the AI utilizes that.

Likely more important is the fact that SCH has 2 great mana regen abilities while WHM seems to have 0? Maybe I need to look at the skills more closely but WHM seems a little shafted there.
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CubaLibre · the road lawyer Joined: 02 Mar 2007 Location: Balmer

BotageL · Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 6:25 am

Flylighter · Joined: 16 Nov 2008 Location: On sabbaddical

This is exactly what it looks like:

This ended up being a failure (you have to burn him down super fast at the end):

And this dude looks like he blew a clown and gave me many laughs:

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| BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | · true doom murderhead Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Austria

| BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | · true doom murderhead Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Austria

Someone kneeled before Odin? Did that help?

| BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | · true doom murderhead Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Austria

Game is live again, log in log in log in

notbov · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

was up early and decided to give a quick test login

I got in on the first try

someone hold me, I'm scared

(kinda bummed that cross-server Duties have gone from every server in a data center to smaller groups like what Blizzard used to do with battlegroups, but I also like games when they work, so)
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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

So, they gave us everything we asked for except AFK timers. Awesome, you made the parking lot bigger.
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notbov · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

well, they patched something, and it was a gig big, but they haven't revealed the nebulous details of said patch, so who knows what they actually did

they promised more room and more stable servers and a free week of time and we got that (well, so far, we got the free week, we'll find out how stuff fairs in primetime and the weekend)
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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/4198c8c4e8b4b749e6881aa564b9b8b5c44d4061
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rye · Joined: 06 Dec 2006

I logged in for an hour and then went to go do some stuff. Came back, and the game still said I was logged in. Why do I even
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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

Couldn't log in at 9a, but by 10:30 all was good. Even got in a dungeon run before I had to leave for work. I heard if you log off at an Inn there's a special cutscene when you return? Will find out tomorrow.
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notbov · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

spoilers: it's just your character waking up and getting out of the bed that's in the room
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GcDiaz · Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Clinton, MA

For some reason I feel like the bad times have come and gone, so I'm gonna talk about the game now.

Just broke 20 with my arcanist, and boy am I disappointed that I can't just go buy a mount. Seems I've jumped a few levels ahead of the main story; should've done Sastasha at 15 instead of 20. I blame the hunting log, it's a wonderful thing. So how much longer until I can join a grand company? And how do I get the seals I'll need?
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miaou · Joined: 12 Dec 2012

The quest to get your Chocobo requires minimum level 20 but you must join a Grand Company first, and there are another two dungeons and a group boss fight to go in the story before you get to do that. I was definitely over level 25 when I got my chocobo.