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Final Fantasy XV |OT2| For Jared!

I haven't played Persona 5, so I can't comment on that end. But Final Fantasy XV still gives me a good feeling when I pick it up and play it.

I'm really hoping the devs put in a hard mode so I can find reason to grind further in NG+ (when I inevitably get there). Crossing my fingers it will be added with one of the DLC patches.

EDIT: as for your comment about base PS4 graphics, I think the game looks quite good with a standard PS4. My only complaint is the lack of decent AF, which is noticeable in areas like the desert. Otherwise, it looks quite good.

I am saying with the recent patch it looks a bit better than before, but that just might be me.
 

Vashetti

Banned
Parrying gives you the most amount of points. I don't have it yet but I've gotten very close. Watching people who have gotten it, it comes down to parrying often, avoid getting hit, avoid using items, complete as fast as possible.

I know limiting yourself to parrying may seem like it'll slow you down but when you get 3,000 - 5,000 points for every parry compared to 300 - 700 points for a regular hit, it really starts to add up.

Thanks!
 

Here's a video if you want to study a person who got over a million points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBpJiRHB0Ww

Hard to say. I wasn't really paying attention, and I had only recently picked up the game to play again, maybe a day or two before the patch.

I see. No one else is talking about it so either I am just adjusting back to the level of graphics XV does have over some other games I've been playing, or something did, in fact, change and it just kinda flew under the radar.
 
Anybody doing the Timed Quest Hunts? Any tips for how to take down Dread Behemoth a little quicker? Also does anybody feel like there's more value in AP farming the Sabertusks/Flexitusks (With shield of Justice) than grinding for QP just to buy 999 AP? If you're fast enough you can get about 300+ AP alone just spamming the shield but the Flexitusks have higher HP which can be a bit annoying.
 

Toth

Member
Anybody doing the Timed Quest Hunts? Any tips for how to take down Dread Behemoth a little quicker? Also does anybody feel like there's more value in AP farming the Sabertusks/Flexitusks (With shield of Justice) than grinding for QP just to buy 999 AP? If you're fast enough you can get about 300+ AP alone just spamming the shield but the Flexitusks have higher HP which can be a bit annoying.

I am and I don't have much help to share alas. I am only 79 and he takes a while to kill. He hits too damn hard. I eat Midgarsolom Skewers and the Equalizer seems to help. W/o Ragnarok though, it takes quite some time.

Unfortunately the whole event is messed up right now and people are using an Armiger glitch to mass farm the third hunt. I hope SE fixes it :p It ruins the point of doing any of the hunts legit. They are literally killing 1000's more than would be possible...

p.s The game has crashed at least 5 times for me on the Timed Event menu (usually as I am getting my QP). Never had this problem before :(
 
Anybody doing the Timed Quest Hunts? Any tips for how to take down Dread Behemoth a little quicker? Also does anybody feel like there's more value in AP farming the Sabertusks/Flexitusks (With shield of Justice) than grinding for QP just to buy 999 AP? If you're fast enough you can get about 300+ AP alone just spamming the shield but the Flexitusks have higher HP which can be a bit annoying.
When I was AP farming, I was getting about 1000 per half hour, but it was massively boring, and I'd stop playing after two or three cycles.

What you do is equip the two Fanfare items that give you AP for Time and Offense and also unlock the node that gives you AP for activating Armiger. Then go over there and point the camera towards the bones (they respawn faster that way, for whatever reason). The trick is to make sure the battle actually starts before blasting everything with Shield of the Just, and you should get 0-4 AP for your kills (0 because sometimes your boys will kill them all), and then activate Armiger for 1 more AP while using almost no meter, and then get another 3 AP from the Fanfares. Then you just reset the camera and use the Beast Whistle before the EXP comes up to skip the winning animations and repeat ad nauseam.

It's SO boring, and it takes about 20k AP to max out the nodes, but that's how I did it.
 
I am and I don't have much help to share alas. I am only 79 and he takes a while to kill. He hits too damn hard. I eat Midgarsolom Skewers and the Equalizer seems to help. W/o Ragnarok though, it takes quite some time.

Unfortunately the whole event is messed up right now and people are using an Armiger glitch to mass farm the third hunt. I hope SE fixes it :p It ruins the point of doing any of the hunts legit. They are literally killing 1000's more than would be possible...

p.s The game has crashed at least 5 times for me on the Timed Event menu (usually as I am getting my QP). Never had this problem before :(


See my plan was to eat the Lasagna which gives you immunity to Fire, Ice, and Thunder attacks. So that one AOE Ice attack, and the one where he shoots some ice projectile I would be invulnerable to. It's just too bad it doesn't give you any strength buffs which is what I really want in terms of just hammering away at it's HP (So I just equipped two Blue Diamond Bracelets and hoped for the best.) The first time I tried the boss i had no idea what to expect and I ate Zu Tenders for Crit attacks but I was wasting too much Elixers/Mega curatives that I decided it was better to mitigate the damage problem than the strength problem.

In any case, the fastest way I've found is to spam Armiger/Ignis' Overwhelm (with Noctis equipped with the Bow of Clever for maximum damage) and try to get as many Link Attacks as possible (since I have the critical Link/Limit Break Link AP node activated and everybody is wearing the Friendship Band Accessory). I defeated him in like 10-15 Minutes last night before the hourly ranking, but typically I like fighting him without all the links/overwhelm but my food buff was running out so I really had to hurry things along. oh I'm lvl 105 btw

Yeah I heard about the glitch yesterday when I was wondering why some ppl were so highly ranked real shitty of them, hope SE patches that but I doubt it...


When I was AP farming, I was getting about 1000 per half hour, but it was massively boring, and I'd stop playing after two or three cycles.

What you do is equip the two Fanfare items that give you AP for Time and Offense and also unlock the node that gives you AP for activating Armiger. Then go over there and point the camera towards the bones (they respawn faster that way, for whatever reason). The trick is to make sure the battle actually starts before blasting everything with Shield of the Just, and you should get 0-4 AP for your kills (0 because sometimes your boys will kill them all), and then activate Armiger for 1 more AP while using almost no meter, and then get another 3 AP from the Fanfares. Then you just reset the camera and use the Beast Whistle before the EXP comes up to skip the winning animations and repeat ad nauseam.

It's SO boring, and it takes about 20k AP to max out the nodes, but that's how I did it.

Yeah I really found that method with the Three Valleys Sabertusks to be really boring and I couldn't really stand much of it after an hour. So I went and did a kind of unorthodox method of using the Car. I tied a rubberband on my R2 trigger to let the car roll on the roads and farmed AP from the Road Trip node. I'd let the game run overnight and when I came back I think I would have at least 200+ AP (dependent on hours tho) but it's a waste of my electric bill and one time the game went into a infinite loading screen and since it doesn't save while driving all my AP gained over the hours went out the window.

I was about to give up until the Timed Quest came along and I saw the 999 AP prize, but one of the hunts is just defeating a bunch of Sabertusks/Flexitusks for 10 minutes (though you're supposed to defeat as many as possible for a high score) I find that using the old method on these enemies works really well and has gained me more AP than I think grinding just for 999 AP ever would.

However, I think once this event is over and if I still don't have enough AP to max out the Ascenion nodes I'll try your method since it seems a lot more interesting.
 

alternade

Member
So is there any use to leveling fishing, photography and survival? I'm putting alot in cooking because I want to do that exp trick for 600k - 1million with the stacked ham sandwich and the expericast. Just wish I hadn't sold all my debased and rare coins to get money.

The only complaint I have thus far is that weapons are hard to come by and it seems that a combo of swords and great swords are all o need. Well that and magic is kind of useless in this game or rather it's too slow to be effective
 

Ludens

Banned
Saw the new timed, saw there are limits (you can't use this or that), decided to skip the whole thing. I'm level 99 already, done pretty much everything, there's no reason to waste my time on useless stuff anymore.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
Do daggers even have any Link Strikes?
Greatswords seem pretty light on them, too.
Handguns?

After basically 3 and a half full playthroughs of the game I can't think of seeing a single Link Strike while using daggers.
They seem really heavily weighted towards one-handed swords and lances.

And, oddly, I got a Parry Link while using a Royal Arm last night, (Sword of the Tall, I think), and those are specifically supposed to be incapable of them, aren't they?

Saw the new timed, saw there are limits (you can't use this or that), decided to skip the whole thing. I'm level 99 already, done pretty much everything, there's no reason to waste my time on useless stuff anymore.

The only limits are no Summons, Ring of the Lucii or one of the DLC weapons.
Seems like basic no-brainers for competitive leaderboard combat challenges.
 

MilkBeard

Member
This was actually pretty easily google-able information, but it's Prompto next, and they're aiming for a June release.

Wow, never seen that before. I did a quick google search and nothing came up.

Side note: I don't want to sound snarky, but just because it's "googleable on your own" doesn't mean it can't be discussed. This is a discussion forum after all.

Any idea who Prompto is aiming at? Spoilertag if it's something that has been leaked or shown (I'm not completely through the game yet ;) ).
 
Wow, never seen that before. I did a quick google search and nothing came up.

Side note: I don't want to sound snarky, but just because it's "googleable on your own" doesn't mean it can't be discussed. This is a discussion forum after all.

Any idea who Prompto is aiming at? Spoilertag if it's something that has been leaked or shown (I'm not completely through the game yet ;) ).
Looks like a regular magitek armor but given Ardyn likes to mess with ppl it could be someone completely different prompto is looking at
 

SoulUnison

Banned
Wow, never seen that before. I did a quick google search and nothing came up.

Side note: I don't want to sound snarky, but just because it's "googleable on your own" doesn't mean it can't be discussed. This is a discussion forum after all.

Any idea who Prompto is aiming at? Spoilertag if it's something that has been leaked or shown (I'm not completely through the game yet ;) ).

I wasn't trying to be aggressive or anything, sorry, it's just that googling "Episode Prompto" gives you that trailer and info in all of, like, the top 5 results.

Prompto seems to be leveling his gun at an MT (Magitek Trooper,) which might make his reaction and apparent emotion seem odd to you if you're not fairly late in the game's story, so that's really as much as should be said at this point.
 

MilkBeard

Member
I wasn't trying to be aggressive or anything, sorry, it's just that googling "Episode Prompto" gives you that trailer and info in all of, like, the top 5 results.

Prompto seems to be leveling his gun at an MT (Magitek Trooper,) which might make his reaction and apparent emotion seem odd to you if you're not fairly late in the game's story, so that's really as much as should be said at this point.

Yeah no probs, I think I was also trying to avoid spoilers generally as well, but I just did a general search and nothing came up. I didn't know they released a video for it, which is cool. Hopefully they will drop it around E3.

I'm at the point where Prompto leaves the group, but he hasn't come back yet. After going through a dungeon I went back to the open world and played around for a bit. Spent a few hours in the dungeon right outside the barricade to Insomnia.

Wasn't able to play the past two days.
 
Do daggers even have any Link Strikes?
Greatswords seem pretty light on them, too.
Handguns?

After basically 3 and a half full playthroughs of the game I can't think of seeing a single Link Strike while using daggers.
They seem really heavily weighted towards one-handed swords and lances.

And, oddly, I got a Parry Link while using a Royal Arm last night, (Sword of the Tall, I think), and those are specifically supposed to be incapable of them, aren't they?.

Tutorial states that swords, greatswords, and lances can link-strike.

Yeah no probs, I think I was also trying to avoid spoilers generally as well, but I just did a general search and nothing came up. I didn't know they released a video for it, which is cool. Hopefully they will drop it around E3.

I'm at the point where Prompto leaves the group, but he hasn't come back yet. After going through a dungeon I went back to the open world and played around for a bit. Spent a few hours in the dungeon right outside the barricade to Insomnia.

Wasn't able to play the past two days.

Really excited to see and play Episode Prompto. Waiting for that inevitable trailer. :D

All I want is the Afrosword. I don't have time to farm QPs. Why did it have to be tied to a leaderboard. :(

I don't believe it is wholly tied to the leaderboards. You can get 50 QP an hour by doing the quest. (So I've been told)
 

ultima786

Member
Glad to see a good number of thoughtful, positive posts giving ffxv some love. It's epic, but not-fully-realized story still has some chance to bring it to beyond greatness.

I had a blast killing those millions of sabertusks in the last timed event. And I wish there were a lot more cactaurs on the arches... In fact, made me dream of a boss battle with someone on those arches, warping back and forth between them.

Alas! FFXV, SO much potential....
 

AndyB1974

Member
So, I recently got a Ps4 Pro and have been playing FFXV. A new install from my physical Day One copy with no patches downloaded as my Pro has been dis-connected from my network for a while. I finally downloaded a 17GB update last night to patch the game to 1.09. First thing I noticed when I booted the game up was a black border around the screen. Seems like this was introduced with patch 1.03 and the fix is to got to PS4 Settings -> Sound and Screen -> Display Area Settings and enlarge the display area to max. Did that and rebooted FFXV and the game now fills the screen correctly with no border. The problem is, the game now looks noticeably blurrier and softer, as though the image has been stretched to fit the screen, although the text and HUD still look just as crisp as before.

v 1.00, no patches.
finalfantasyxv_201705hjxak.png

v1.09

Did anyone else have this and was able to remove the border without blurring the image? I'm playing on a 27" 1080p Asus monitor btw.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
So, I recently got a Ps4 Pro and have been playing FFXV. A new install from my physical Day One copy with no patches downloaded as my Pro has been dis-connected from my network for a while. I finally downloaded a 17GB update last night to patch the game to 1.09. First thing I noticed when I booted the game up was a black border around the screen. Seems like this was introduced with patch 1.03 and the fix is to got to PS4 Settings -> Sound and Screen -> Display Area Settings and enlarge the display area to max. Did that and rebooted FFXV and the game now fills the screen correctly with no border. The problem is, the game now looks noticeably blurrier and softer, as though the image has been stretched to fit the screen, although the text and HUD still look just as crisp as before.

v 1.00, no patches.


v1.09


Did anyone else have this and was able to remove the border without blurring the image? I'm playing on a 27" 1080p Asus monitor btw.

Sorry man, I have a Pro as well and haven't noticed anything like that. I'm playing on a UHD Samsung TV though, so maybe it's a monitor specific thing. The blurriness in the second image is sorta obvious, almost like the game is running at a lower resolution and blowing up the image.

Can you check in the in-game settings what mode you're running the game in ? High, Lite or Standard ?
 

MilkBeard

Member
Finally finished the dungeon just outside Insomnia gate. I spent too much time there because I was overlooking some stairs that I thought I went through before, but didn't...ahh. Anyway, got to the boss, and thought I was in over my head, but I had enough MegaPhoenixes to get through and eventually killed the thing.

Moved to another medium to high-level dungeon somewhere near Cauthess, with lots of Mindlflayers and poison...pretty good times, lol.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Cross posting my ongoing FFXV pics from the Pro thread. The Duscae region looks amazing. The game's visuals are so good.



Pro in High mode looks jaw droppingly gorgeous at times. After 15~ hours of play, the frame pacing issues are subsided as well and it's amazing the game doesn't drop performance like frame rate drops during combat or anything hectic.

finalfantasyxv_2017059vs5k.png
 

AndyB1974

Member
Sorry man, I have a Pro as well and haven't noticed anything like that. I'm playing on a UHD Samsung TV though, so maybe it's a monitor specific thing. The blurriness in the second image is sorta obvious, almost like the game is running at a lower resolution and blowing up the image.

Can you check in the in-game settings what mode you're running the game in ? High, Lite or Standard ?

I was playing in high mode. I deleted the game and re-installed the 1.00 version from disc so everything looks nice and crisp again. I'll download the update again tonight and do some more tests with the in-game quality settings and the PS4 display area settings.
 
Cross posting my ongoing FFXV pics from the Pro thread. The Duscae region looks amazing. The game's visuals are so good.



Pro in High mode looks jaw droppingly gorgeous at times. After 15~ hours of play, the frame pacing issues are subsided as well and it's amazing the game doesn't drop performance like frame rate drops during combat or anything hectic.

finalfantasyxv_2017059vs5k.png
Coming back to this game from Zelda, it was like—holy shit—Zelda looks like shit compared to this.

BUT, man, I was doing stupid shit like pressing triangle, thinking I could jump, for a while.
 

Arkeband

Banned
So I finally sat down and played through Episode Gladiolus, here are my thoughts:

  • The audio is still mixed terribly, there's a part where Gladiolus is grunting over Gilgamesh's exposition, literally the same exact thing that FFXV was docked for doing at the end of the campaign. They seem incapable of learning from mistakes or applying some basic audio QA.
  • Visually everything is fairly unremarkable aside from the occasional chasm vista - Gladio's character model has less animation than Noct's, and he runs like he's holding in a shit.
  • As far as the combat, it's actually mildly entertaining and I'd go so far as to say parts of this should have been baked into the main game's combat. The score attack mode was actually fun to rush through without being bogged down by story scenes.

Overall, as to the reason this was cut out of the main game, did this add anything of value from a story/writing standpoint? The answer is a resounding "no" - not only did they forget to explain Gladio's giant chest scar, but they gave him the head cut and it literally doesn't even bleed, it's just an instant scar, once again showing that this game was made by aliens who don't understand human psychology, or apparently anatomy. In addition, the writing is straight up atrocious to the point of parody.

Hopefully Prompto's isn't as stupid, I bought the season pass so I'll experience it one way or another.

One last thing, Gladio's shirtless outfit disappears his scar, as if they couldn't have just made two versions pre and post scar. Sloppy.
 
I'm still early enough in the game where the Genji Blade is better than anything else I can give Gladio. So there's that, at least.

Also, the extra battle is really nice.
 

Kweh

Member
What do the different colours mean on the Ascension grid. There are yellow and purple nodes, is this passive and active abilities or something else?
 

MilkBeard

Member
Does anyone know of they fixed the lipsync OUTSIDE of cutscenes? In normal conversations the lip flap was way off

Doubt it. There's far too much contextual dialogue for them to be messing with that. If they were going to waste time with that, I'd rather they make a new scenario, or make a hard mode, or add more quests, etc.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Up to Chapter 6. The main story chapters are going by real quick, though I've spent a good couple of hours just doing hunts and leveling up. Currently at level 60, which I think may be too high :p The game makes it too easy to exploit the exp multipliers. Game continues to look and play fantastic.

finalfantasyxv_2017056tsc5.png

finalfantasyxv_201705mhslc.png

finalfantasyxv_2017055qs5v.png



 

Lime

Member
Got the game incredibly cheap with the price error on EU PSN. My partner and I played all the way to chapter 9 during the weekend, but holy crap the game seems incredibly rough in both its mechanics and its narrative.

The loading times are atrocious, the car driving is maddening, the side quests are so superficial and uninteresting, the combat is clunky and slow, the framerate is low (PS4 pro here), the animations make movement incredibly frustrating, party members' AI is incredibly infuriating.

Then the narrative is filled with holes and unbelievable motivations characters. I don't even know what is going on and events seemingly don't matter to the main characters at all. Then there's the inane dialogue and laughable antagonists.

The amount of money and workhours that went into this project didn't really give a proper return, imo.
 
Up to Chapter 6. The main story chapters are going by real quick, though I've spent a good couple of hours just doing hunts and leveling up. Currently at level 60, which I think may be too high :p The game makes it too easy to exploit the exp multipliers. Game continues to look and play fantastic.

finalfantasyxv_2017056tsc5.png

finalfantasyxv_201705mhslc.png

finalfantasyxv_2017055qs5v.png




Thank you for posting all of these screenshots! They're all really great!
 
I have to say I really dislike the new implementation of the timed quests, with QP and leaderboards. I especially hate leaderboards.

This newest patch basically killed any of my interest in starting the game up once a week for timed content, lol. I'll be back for Episode Prompto but the QP thing seems way too tedious to be worth my time when there are other games to be played.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Thank you for posting all of these screenshots! They're all really great!

You're welcome :D and I've got a few more. Up till Chapter 9 now.
I guess the open-world part of the game is effectively complete as far as the story goes at least. That's what the game makes it sound like.

finalfantasyxv_201705p5uuy.png




 

h3ro

Member
Can you please link to a separate album or spoiler your shots? It drastically slows loading on mobile. Thanks.
 

Ruff

Member
I didn't even realize the final ending scene could be different
with Luna and Noctis. She cries if you use the right photo apparently??
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Can you please link to a separate album or spoiler your shots? It drastically slows loading on mobile. Thanks.

Apologies. I'll take out the excess images, maybe leave just 1 full sized one per post.
 
You're welcome :D and I've got a few more. Up till Chapter 9 now.
I guess the open-world part of the game is effectively complete as far as the story goes at least. That's what the game makes it sound like.

Looking forward to your photos you grab going forward. :)

I didn't even realize the final ending scene could be different
with Luna and Noctis. She cries if you use the right photo apparently??

Yup. Glad people were finally able to figure it out. Thought that would be a secret thing forever. :)

So tempted to look but I'm just going to finish the game first (lol).

Been wanting to replay for a while now. But I want to get through some of my backlog first before replaying.
 
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