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

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Foxxsoxx

Member
I can understand it wanting to be story focused, but I don't think 100 quests were needed to accomplish that. A smaller amount of quests, expanded with less filler would make these much more enjoyable.

Just had to go through 20 mind-numbingly awful quest just to get to something interesting happening, which if it follows how vanilla quests work, I'll then have to do another 20 boring quests to get to one that has some kind of payoff and then rinse and repeat.

Hopefully I'm wrong, I don't like being a negative guy but these are really dull for the most part.

I thought maybe things were beginning to get interesting as slow as Vanillas story was, the ending finally had things happening that I cared about. Then Post-Patch quests came out and reset everything back to zero :(
 
I can understand it wanting to be story focused, but I don't think 100 quests were needed to accomplish that. A smaller amount of quests, expanded with less filler would make these much more enjoyable.

Just had to go through 20 mind-numbingly awful quest just to get to something interesting happening, which if it follows how vanilla quests work, I'll then have to do another 20 boring quests to get to one that has some kind of payoff and then rinse and repeat.

Hopefully I'm wrong, I don't like being a negative guy but these are really dull for the most part.

2.0 Launched basically a new world from zero, and developers filled all these new areas with a line of quests so players had to explore this vast new world before they started tackling high end content. It wasn't mean to be done in a couple of days.

That said, I understand that the quest design and pacing feels off now, but on release, with plenty of people and stuff to do, It wasn't that bad.

Quest pacing does get better when you start to reach later areas and specifically 2.3 and 2.4 main quests.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
2.x quests were padded to hell and back. I don't think "story focused" is the right word when some quests involve really mundane tasks (this is supposed to be extra content for levelcapped characters) like distributing uniforms or looking after kids who want to adventure, just in general it feels like they wanted to give you a lot to do and also use it as leadups to new content, but didn't really have much of an idea of how to make it all be important. 3.x were both better and worse, better in that they most avoided wasting your time (3.2 notwithstanding) but also became more predictable (3.5...) and pushing new content outside of these story quests because of the premise that people rush through this story to get to instances is both negative and positive.

I mean... From a game perspective, aren't you just kinda wasting our time with those quests if they don't involve particularly interesting gameplay or don't relate to any cool new content? That's of course the whole "story-oriented" philosophy. And hey, an MMORPG is a good place to tell an expansive fantasy story with many characters. I just don't think point-and-clicky quests with minimal gameplay and a lot of movies is the right way to go about it. This is a game. An online game to boot. Use that opportunity, stop showing us movies about characters... that aren't us or even other players!

Am I out of touch?
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I haven't been following the game much since I burned myself out back around February, so I'm not sure what the current schedule is about pre-expansion info. When are we expecting to find out the meat and potatoes of major class/combat changes, as well as more info about the abilities of the new classes?
 

dramatis

Member
Seems I have 1.8 million to waste before doing a World Transfer? Anything useful I could buy?
What server do you want to transfer to?

Ideally you make a scrub character on that server, check the marketboards for the kinds of items making dough, then exit and delete the scrub character. After that, use the character you want to transfer and buy stuff to bring along.
 
2.x quests were padded to hell and back. I don't think "story focused" is the right word when some quests involve really mundane tasks (this is supposed to be extra content for levelcapped characters) like distributing uniforms or looking after kids who want to adventure, just in general it feels like they wanted to give you a lot to do and also use it as leadups to new content, but didn't really have much of an idea of how to make it all be important. 3.x were both better and worse, better in that they most avoided wasting your time (3.2 notwithstanding) but also became more predictable (3.5...) and pushing new content outside of these story quests because of the premise that people rush through this story to get to instances is both negative and positive.

I mean... From a game perspective, aren't you just kinda wasting our time with those quests if they don't involve particularly interesting gameplay or don't relate to any cool new content? That's of course the whole "story-oriented" philosophy. And hey, an MMORPG is a good place to tell an expansive fantasy story with many characters. I just don't think point-and-clicky quests with minimal gameplay and a lot of movies is the right way to go about it. This is a game. An online game to boot. Use that opportunity, stop showing us movies about characters... that aren't us or even other players!

Am I out of touch?

This sounds like the basic argument of how to do storytelling in games: cutscenes with minimal interaction or as much direct player control as possible with more environmental storytelling. I'll take either one if the story is interesting enough, but of course I do appreciate when games take advantage of the interactive angle. I feel like the design of solo duties in 3.x does a good job of varying things up while being relevant to key story beats (e.g., rescuing the hostages in The Vault, the grand melee, the fight against the Warriors of Darkness), and something like The Final Steps of Faith was really well integrated into the story. Of course it's true that a lot of the story is delivered through cutscenes, and I can understand if that's something you dislike. About your complaint about videos that don't focus on your or other player characters, well, it's not like there's a whole lot of storytelling potential in the Warrior of Light to focus on. You play a blank slate with minimal personality or individuality. There have been a few hints in the post-HW storyline at trying to develop your character out a bit, but they haven't blossomed into anything yet. Your character ends up being more akin to the silent hero of Dragon Quest games than the highly individualized characters who have been protagonists of Final Fantasy games since IV, which I suppose comes with the MMO territory for the most part.
 
What server do you want to transfer to?

Ideally you make a scrub character on that server, check the marketboards for the kinds of items making dough, then exit and delete the scrub character. After that, use the character you want to transfer and buy stuff to bring along.

Buy Allagan coins from the market board because you can bring those with you to get your gil back

Thinking of moving to Ragnarok or any other EU server.

I think I'll just buy allagan coins, too lazy to create new character check prices and all. I just kinda wanna be done with it and start rolling out the sooner the better.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Cleric stance turned into a DPS cooldown.

Esuna given a regen effect.

Healer DPS spells scale off of Mind by default.
 

Squishy3

Member
Actually yeah, turning it into a DPS cooldown would be pretty good. Obviously don't make it too strong, maybe 10% or something (equivalent to untraited B4B) and worst case you activated it at the wrong time you just lose the extra damage since you're going to need to heal.

This'd probably come with a toning down of the healers' attack skill potency too to offset the fact they don't need to be in cleric stance to do damage.
 

Mr Croft

Member
I know majority of gaf plays on ultros but do we have a exchange thread list off of gaf to go to? Or a discord? (I didn't see anything on the first page) I would like to play with other players from here even tho I play on hyperon.
 
The new training quests are nice, man so many bad tanks could have used some of these back in the 2.x era.

I used them to get a feel of the controls, camera, targeting, etc... I don't want to tank a group on Duty Finder so rusty.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Personally I think it'd be perfect, but I thought people in general were opposed to healers being able to dps and heal "at the same time" without penalties?

I think this is true in general but I'm not a diehard FFXIV player. As much as I find it distasteful that healers are expected to DPS, they can't really change that without reconsidering their encounter design entirely. The whole cycle between intense damage phase and relaxation phase means healers get a lot of free time on their hands. In WoW, there's literally no moment where people aren't taking damage that needs to be healed so this "problem" never comes up. I'm okay with the two types of encounter designs, but if I'm forced to DPS as a healer to be "optimal", at the very least I don't want to deal with Cleric Stance.
 
After reading a lot of stories on reddit it seems like if you're going to criticize someone for something in a dungeon and a few give snarky/rude replies it's probably best to go all in.

Because you're going to get kicked anyway before the last boss if not immediately.
 

Kenai

Member
Cleric stance turned into a DPS cooldown.

Esuna given a regen effect.

Healer DPS spells scale off of Mind by default.

The only thing that could potentially be annoying is Esuna regen aggro if the game feels like giving "surprise" environmental status effects right before trash pulls, although that didn't happen much in HW outside Sohm Al.

Also i don't play WHM but I assume that is only WHM Esuna? Other healers getting an Esuna bonus? (this doesn't matter much if they don't tbh but still).

Actually now that I think about it I am not sure how cool I am with a healer specific DPS cooldown and what that implies but yea.

Personally I think it'd be perfect, but I thought people in general were opposed to healers being able to dps and heal "at the same time" without penalties?

The penalty is entirely superfluous outside PvP and they removed Cleric Stance there (and will probably adjust healer DPS potency there to compensate for the innate boost). Healers already have to pay close attention to an extra couple heath bars than anyone else, and also have accuracy issues during raiding that higher ILvls won't resolve.

I generally hate DPSing while healing but if I am expected to do so I feel it should be as smooth as possible. Even as an AST it should be easy to keep both innate dots up on the main boss on a regular basis with current Cleric Stance gone.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.

Omni

Member
Hmmm, that's odd.

I like how cleric functions now. The only change I'd want is for it to give the player an accuracy bonus. But the wording in that post "Cleric stance is" makes me think it's something else.

I don't see it becoming a damage CD though. That would be a huge change... And kinda awful if we're being honest. The nature of healing is that two healers working together means they both can DPS far more without penalty. Limiting it to a CD is a terrible idea. Maybe it's referring to the new cross-job actions?
 
Hmmm, that's odd.

I like how cleric functions now. The only change I'd want is for it to give the player an accuracy bonus. But the wording in that post "Cleric stance is" makes me think it's something else.

I don't see it becoming a damage CD though. That would be a huge change... And kinda awful if we're being honest. The nature of healing is that two healers working together means they both can DPS far more without penalty. Limiting it to a CD is a terrible idea. Maybe it's referring to the new cross-job actions?

I thought he meant it like damage would scale off of Mind and cleric stance would just be a cooldown for X seconds to do increased damage but I could be wrong.
 

Kenai

Member
The wording is a bit vague. Maybe there's like.. standard abilities every member of said role will have (like Provoke(?)) and then additional effect(s) depending on that specific job to make them feel more unique.

That's kinda the case with some skills already (like Benefic proccing instant Benefic 2 vs Cure proccing free Cure 2), but they are pretty inconsistent so maybe it's expanding on that? I dunno.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Esuna should probably be cross class. There is no practical difference between Esuna, Essential Dignity and Leeches. It's just unnecessary fat.
 
Esuna should probably be cross class. There is no practical difference between Esuna, Essential Dignity and Leeches. It's just unnecessary fat.

I wonder how far they will go with it though.

Like Cure/Benefic/Physick all heal for 400 potency on a single target so will they do the same with that? The proc effects come from traits.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
No, because they're important parts of the healing "rotation". If they ever want to differentiate healers starting from their base skills (a change I would support), making everyone use Cure is setting themselves up for a lot of extra work.

I suppose the same is true of Esuna but I think Esuna is a minor part of the healing kit and exists solely to tackle a single mechanic.
 

aceface

Member
The only annoying thing about cleric stance is how it sometimes gets "stuck" on in hectic situations. The feel of "I clicked the button so why am I healing in cleric stance."
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Yep, that's really why it's unacceptable for me. The keybinds just aren't responsive enough to support stance dancing DPS mode for healers.

"Oh I want to drop Cleric Stance to Essential Dignity the tank. Woops, it didn't drop, there goes my emergency CD."

Along the same lines, Inner Beast needs to turn into Fell Cleave automagically upon stance switch. That's another part where you're either forced to use macros (which can be unresponsive) or dedicate extra button slots (which you might not have or might be awkward) to 2 sets of mutually exclusive abilities.
 

Kenai

Member
Maybe it won't be for some things that have unique animations so they don't waste them (like the Cure/Physick/Bene) so the art team has more fun. Lots of cross class skills don't have much animation
 

Squishy3

Member
Esuna should probably be cross class. There is no practical difference between Esuna, Essential Dignity and Leeches. It's just unnecessary fat.
One of these things is not like the other.

Maybe it won't be for some things that have unique animations so they don't waste them (like the Cure/Physick/Bene) so the art team has more fun. Lots of cross class skills don't have much animation
I can see using tanks as an example and how they said Rampart will become a cross-class skill, that if they remove Shadowskin from Dark Knight that Dark Knight's Rampart would use the Shadowskin animation since it already exists.

So if they make cross-class skills that replace stuff other classes already have and are just consolidating I can see them using the animations they'd already made for those.
 
One of these things is not like the other.

I can see using tanks as an example and how they said Rampart will become a cross-class skill, that if they remove Shadowskin from Dark Knight that Dark Knight's Rampart would use the Shadowskin animation since it already exists.

So if they make cross-class skills that replace stuff other classes already have and are just consolidating I can see them using the animations they'd already made for those.

Some cross class skills already have unique animations like Fracture on Paladin for example.

There are some others like Heavy Swing which are useless to cross class but it's there.

So yeah, Rampart will probably retain the Shadowskin animation for Dark Knight.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Edit: Shit, this isn't the Nier thread. lol

Lol FFXIV collab wen

Rant of the night:

Lightspeed reduces spell cast time by 2.5s
Helios has a 2.5s cast, down to 2.25s with my spell speed
Aspected Helios has a 3s cast, down to 2.7s with my spell speed

So under Lightspeed, I should be able to cast Helios while moving, but not Aspected Helios, right?

Actually, I can cast both while moving, because I imagine the client-server talk rate cannot handle time differentials of 0.2s or less. My guess is, when I hit Asp Helios, the cast begins immediately on my side. By the time the server sees that I'm moving while casting and sends a packet to cancel my cast, my client already sent the completed Asp Helios cast, which the server then processes successfully.

You see this a lot in PVP where you're running and mashing buttons and the cast bar starts over and over again but never finishes. Or even worse, when you lift your finger off your movement keys and immediately begin a cast, but because the server thinks you're still running when they receive your cast packet, they cancel your cast. You lose maybe 0.5-1s from this exchange, and that can mean the difference between a kill and failure.

You also see this if you're melee chasing some ranged and trying to land some skill. They're obviously in range when you hit the key (because it's lit up) but by the time it reaches the server their server-side position already moved them beyond your range and thus the attack fails, so you're just mashing keys while chasing hoping one of the presses gets through.

Its this kind of imprecision that really drives me insane. I really want them to favor client-side processing over server-side with some kind of lag compensation tech like GGPO. I wouldn't even really have noticed this cropping up over and over again if it weren't for the GARO event, but it really makes PVP untenable.
 

dabig2

Member
So I started my anima weapon quest today, because I apparently hate my life.

Just finished crystal phase. Funny thing was that almost all of the zones had a crystal dropping after only doing 1 Fate. And then my last visit was to the Hinterlands where I did 11 straight Fates until finally getting the water crystal to drop. Thought I was lucky at first only to have it average all out at the end. Couldn't imagine doing this before they nerfed it where you had to collect 3 of each and the drop rate was much, much lower.

Hoping to finish that 10 dungeon questline by the end of the weekend and then I start the real grind. I really, really wish I didn't spend a lot of my beastmen tokens on other needless stuff though. For instance, I had over 120 Vanu tribe tokens at 1 point, but on a whim decided to exchange like 50 for some Sylkis Buds. Also bought some other useless crap with the other tribes cause I didn't know what to do with them at the time.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
This sounds like the basic argument of how to do storytelling in games: cutscenes with minimal interaction or as much direct player control as possible with more environmental storytelling. I'll take either one if the story is interesting enough, but of course I do appreciate when games take advantage of the interactive angle. I feel like the design of solo duties in 3.x does a good job of varying things up while being relevant to key story beats (e.g., rescuing the hostages in The Vault, the grand melee, the fight against the Warriors of Darkness), and something like The Final Steps of Faith was really well integrated into the story. Of course it's true that a lot of the story is delivered through cutscenes, and I can understand if that's something you dislike. About your complaint about videos that don't focus on your or other player characters, well, it's not like there's a whole lot of storytelling potential in the Warrior of Light to focus on. You play a blank slate with minimal personality or individuality. There have been a few hints in the post-HW storyline at trying to develop your character out a bit, but they haven't blossomed into anything yet. Your character ends up being more akin to the silent hero of Dragon Quest games than the highly individualized characters who have been protagonists of Final Fantasy games since IV, which I suppose comes with the MMO territory for the most part.

Without further ranting on the issue, solo duties are poison for an MMO.
 

SkyOdin

Member
Esuna should probably be cross class. There is no practical difference between Esuna, Essential Dignity and Leeches. It's just unnecessary fat.
What is the point of consolidating them though? No one has all three skills at the same time. Combining them doesn't reduce the number of skills a healer has on their bar. It just strips the unique flavor from the classes. I don't see how having all three really hurts any of the individual classes.

"Trimming fat" would entail something along the lines of making Stone 2 auto-upgrade into Stone 3 instead of awkwardly requiring the WHM to have both if they want to run a leveling or trial roulette.
 

Reveirg

Member
Planning on catching up for Stormblood soon.

How much game hours would you estimate a story playthrough of patches 3.3 through 3.55?
 

What The Fox

Neo Member
...
Actually, I can cast both while moving, because I imagine the client-server talk rate cannot handle time differentials of 0.2s or less. My guess is, when I hit Asp Helios, the cast begins immediately on my side. By the time the server sees that I'm moving while casting and sends a packet to cancel my cast, my client already sent the completed Asp Helios cast, which the server then processes successfully.
It's always been like that with casters in this game. It's nice in a way because you can start moving slightly before a cast is finished without canceling it. The timing for that is usually pretty consistent. I take advantage of that all the time (for example, running a bit more toward the center of the group before medica finishes casting). I know you're specifically talking about being able to move freely during a 0.2s cast time, but being able to move before a cast finishes is a result of the same issue.
On the other hand...
Or even worse, when you lift your finger off your movement keys and immediately begin a cast, but because the server thinks you're still running when they receive your cast packet, they cancel your cast. You lose maybe 0.5-1s from this exchange, and that can mean the difference between a kill and failure.
I agree this is really frustrating. I've nearly killed my tank by having a cast cancel if I began too soon after coming to a stop (movement wise).

So for me it's a toss up I suppose because I do like the former. I wouldn't mind if they made things more consistent though; it'd be for the best. I'm guessing this is the same reason why you can be hit by aoes after it seems you dodged in time (although that's occasionally a discrepancy between cast bar and animation). Dunno how they'd fix it without major overhaul to the server-client interaction.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
What is the point of consolidating them though? No one has all three skills at the same time. Combining them doesn't reduce the number of skills a healer has on their bar. It just strips the unique flavor from the classes. I don't see how having all three really hurts any of the individual classes.

It's like having 3 different Provokes (although that would've been better in the long run if each tank class got every their own Provoke) that are mechanically identical, or if MNK/NIN/DRG had B4B except it was called something different but functioned the same. If they're going to use Cross Role skills going forward than Esuna is a find candidate. It's possible to maintain flavor and consolidate a "baseline role toolkit" anyway depending on implementation.

Just design-wise, introducing the concept of a "cross role skillset", without consolidating things that can be consolidated just feels like halfassed corner-cutting. I guess I'm just a huge stickler for these things?
 

What The Fox

Neo Member
Planning on catching up for Stormblood soon.

How much game hours would you estimate a story playthrough of patches 3.3 through 3.55?

I believe it's 25 story quests total (if I counted them correctly).
3.3: 6
3.4: 10
3.5: 5
3.56: 4

Don't forget there's also required story dungeons for each of the patches (excluding 3.56) as well as some other instances too. I don't remember exactly how long it all took me though. You could probably do it in a weekend of fairly casual playing.
 

Squishy3

Member
Well, I guess they remixed the Heavensward final boss theme for Dissidia. Level 60 Heavensward ending spoilers, don't click if you've not finished the base story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62rL8-WyxlE

It's... not very good. It's got 2 instruments on top of each other + the vocals, and it sounds like they're fighting over each other for dominance. There's a couple times towards the end where it's just one of the instruments + the vocals, and that sounds a lot better, but a lot of it doesn't sound very good.
 

Ken

Member
Well, I guess they remixed the Heavensward final boss theme for Dissidia. Level 60 Heavensward ending spoilers, don't click if you've not finished the base story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62rL8-WyxlE

It's... not very good. It's got 2 instruments on top of each other + the vocals, and it sounds like they're fighting over each other for dominance. There's a couple times towards the end where it's just one of the instruments + the vocals, and that sounds a lot better, but a lot of it doesn't sound very good.

it's not that bad

maybe it's good enough while playing to it!
 
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