Final Fantasy XIV

[J1M]

What I remember about Final Fantasy XI, and my memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember being on a full team just roaming around on a beach and we had to pull single enemies that were our level range, if you pulled 2, the team was ripped. And this is one of the things I do remember, because I was asshurt over losing a boatload of exp to "beach slugs". This was really early in the game's life, it may have changed a lot near the end. I also remember teams needing at least 2 people with taunt because 1 tank couldn't keep aggro the entire time even if they did everything they were supposed to do. Successful teams had 2 tanks who worked together to cycle their taunt cooldowns. I was a warrior/monk tank, and I tried to coordinate this with others, but not everyone wanted to listen. ******** players made the game difficult for everyone who was teamed with them. And my experience with this game shaped my view that I'd rather solo, or not play at all than roll the dice with a team of random players.

I never invested in this myself, but my understanding is that you could solo the game as a beast master with a pet. Probably still needed to group to unlock the job and level up a support job.

Aside: one of the great things about the FFXI economy was the way elemental crystals were distributed. Basically, you got them for killing mobs while having a certain buff. Low level characters would get a lot of crystals since they were soloing and high level characters got less due to splitting loot with their group. This meant new players had materials to sell on the auction house that high level players wanted, giving them enough currency to afford crafted equipment.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What I remember about Final Fantasy XI, and my memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember being on a full team just roaming around on a beach and we had to pull single enemies that were our level range, if you pulled 2, the team was ripped. And this is one of the things I do remember, because I was asshurt over losing a boatload of exp to "beach slugs". This was really early in the game's life, it may have changed a lot near the end. I also remember teams needing at least 2 people with taunt because 1 tank couldn't keep aggro the entire time even if they did everything they were supposed to do. Successful teams had 2 tanks who worked together to cycle their taunt cooldowns. I was a warrior/monk tank, and I tried to coordinate this with others, but not everyone wanted to listen. ******** players made the game difficult for everyone who was teamed with them. And my experience with this game shaped my view that I'd rather solo, or not play at all than roll the dice with a team of random players.

You only need one tank. To maintain aggro, the tank has to have the highest amount of threat. This can be done either one of two ways: 1. the easiest way is to just equip the Warrior job (as a main or subjob) and use the Provoke ability when you begin your damage burst so that you have the highest threat. The threat gained by Provoke wears off over time so you have to keep spamming it and try to use your damage abilities right after you pop it. The other method is to equip gear that increases your threat (so you can have tanks who do not have warrior equipped as either a main or subjob). You still need to be dealing a lot of damage to maintain aggro. In either case, even if the tank is doing everything correctly, it is still possible for other DPS to spike and exceed the tank's threat and get aggro. So the DPS also have a responsibility to not pop their damage abilities immediately and wait until after the tank has built up enough threat before going ham.

I never invested in this myself, but my understanding is that you could solo the game as a beast master with a pet. Probably still needed to group to unlock the job and level up a support job.

Any job can theoretically grind mobs lower level than the player to level cap, but it takes a long time. The most efficient way to level is always in a party. In the Beastmaster's case, exp is split between the player and their pet, so you need to be fighting tougher mobs, which takes more time and is more dangerous.

A couple weeks into Horizon's launch, I was a level 35 Dragoon in a leveling party farming wasps in Yuhtunga Jungle when word got out who the highest level players were. There was a party of players who were in the high 60s. A warrior tank, 4 beastmasters, and a white mage healer. Because most gear in FFXI is crafted and it was a fresh server and everyone was poor, the party was funneling all of their gear to the tank so he could survive and hold aggro. Since the damage Beastmaster Pet's do isn't dependent upon the gear the player is wearing, it was okay that the Beastmaster players had crappy gear. The pets did the damage. That also gave the party more leeway in case the tank died, as the mob would go after the four pets while the rest of the party could run away.

[Ranselknulf]

If memory serves me, a lot of those button bloat damage abilities were separated out like that so specific attack combos could be created for more damage.

Most players sucked at making those combos and would just treat them all like individual damage button spams. If you got into a good group though, that understood the interactions of magic elements, combat abilities, and specific enemy weaknesses, then you could really increase your xp gain and damage output.

[rusty_shackleford]

FF14 being popular is proof we don't deserve anything good.

[Ranselknulf]

I tried it for a shortwhile earlier this year. I just didn't have time to really get into it.

My quick analysis of the chat channels showed that 25% of them were literally erotic roleplay channels.

[Kalarion]

What I remember about Final Fantasy XI, and my memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember being on a full team just roaming around on a beach and we had to pull single enemies that were our level range, if you pulled 2, the team was ripped. And this is one of the things I do remember, because I was asshurt over losing a boatload of exp to "beach slugs". This was really early in the game's life, it may have changed a lot near the end. I also remember teams needing at least 2 people with taunt because 1 tank couldn't keep aggro the entire time even if they did everything they were supposed to do. Successful teams had 2 tanks who worked together to cycle their taunt cooldowns. I was a warrior/monk tank, and I tried to coordinate this with others, but not everyone wanted to listen. ******** players made the game difficult for everyone who was teamed with them. And my experience with this game shaped my view that I'd rather solo, or not play at all than roll the dice with a team of random players.

You only need one tank. To maintain aggro, the tank has to have the highest amount of threat. This can be done either one of two ways: 1. the easiest way is to just equip the Warrior job (as a main or subjob) and use the Provoke ability when you begin your damage burst so that you have the highest threat. The threat gained by Provoke wears off over time so you have to keep spamming it and try to use your damage abilities right after you pop it. The other method is to equip gear that increases your threat (so you can have tanks who do not have warrior equipped as either a main or subjob). You still need to be dealing a lot of damage to maintain aggro. In either case, even if the tank is doing everything correctly, it is still possible for other DPS to spike and exceed the tank's threat and get aggro. So the DPS also have a responsibility to not pop their damage abilities immediately and wait until after the tank has built up enough threat before going ham.

This isn't quite right. At low levels and pre-subjob basically your only option for tanking was WAR, for provoke. At higher levels, with subjobs, and with access to advanced classes, options opened up. The key to tanking in XI (at least in groups, raids were absolute chaos with very weird setups) was your subjob, and whether you had a THF (which made tanking easy-mode). Your choices for subjob were either: WAR (Provoke, breaks), SAM (for fast TP gain, Third Eye and Hachi), THF (could do a weak SATA once you hit 60), DRK (could maintain threat forever through pure damage, but no defensive value at all) and NIN (Utsu:Ni, dual-wield, utility through self-invis and self-sneak). MNK was never a desirable subjob for tanking.

The premier tank job was PLD (stuns and heals, defensive abilities and the ability to cast a lesser version of Protect and Shell, could hold group agro forever). But SATA made most group tanking considerations moot: the tank could consistently start with a massive threat lead that the DPS would have a hard time overtaking prior to mob death.

I don't remember ever, even as a lowbie with no subjob, feeling like IT mobs of a proper level range (+3-5 levels over the pt) outclassed us to the point xping was a threat. It was only doing experimental or dangerous stuff (+7-10 levels over the pt using SC and MB, etc) that I felt seriously in danger. If we were dying a lot during a standard grind session it was almost always down to either having to settle for a non-standard tank in subpar gear, or having a ****** healer.

The great thing about XI, especially pre-WOTG, was there was a near-infinite ceiling for group skill expression through SC and MB. The difference between a standard, no-effort grind pt and one that coordinated for proper SC and MB was absolutely incredible. You could literally double or triple xp over time if you were with players who knew what they were doing. The only limit was mob density (very good groups could easily depopulate portions of the zone, leaving 2-3 mins before respawns).

[somerandomdude]

My perspective on FF XI was when the game was very early in its life, like within a month or 2 launch. I understand that they made the game a lot easier and a lot more solo friendly later on in the game's life.

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

I don't remember why I made this topic. It's pretty gay looking back at it now. Wish I could headbutt myself from ever creating it. **** Ukraine.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am still subbed to FF14, mainly because I have a house. You lose your house if you don't enter it at least once every 45 days, and the housing shortage is awful so if I lost it I'd probably never get a house again, or at least a desirable plot. Also, I spent a lot of time decorating it and don't want to do it again. Trying to use glitches to float up objects is a pain. But I have been caring less and less about the house. 7.0 will make or break my interest in the game so I might unsub there. I do ocassionally log in to level up a job or do Eureka, but I mainly play other games. Last year I was playing GW2 and finished that, and over the last few months I've been playing WoW again, but I've done pretty much done all of the content and achieved my goals there. I will play through the new WoW dungeon releasing next week, maybe attain this season's Mythic Keystone Master (requires a score of 2,000 and I am at 1,273), and then quit.

[Derringer]

I tried it for a shortwhile earlier this year. I just didn't have time to really get into it.

My quick analysis of the chat channels showed that 25% of them were literally erotic roleplay channels.

That sound like WoW to be frank, or at least what people talked about it being like.

My perspective on FF XI was when the game was very early in its life, like within a month or 2 launch. I understand that they made the game a lot easier and a lot more solo friendly later on in the game's life.

People have bitched about XI either being too hard or being casualized to death. I liked some of the design from when I tried out one of the private servers people set up but I couldn't be assed to play through it.

[rusty_shackleford]

I am still subbed to FF14, mainly because I have a house. You lose your house if you don't enter it at least once every 45 days

I can go enter my house from EQ2 that I first created probably before some of the posters on this forum were born and it will work just fine.
You're being jewed.

[KnightoftheWind]

I hear these games haven't been good since Final Fantasy IX, and it sure looks that way. It really doesn't get more predatory than having your in-game house vanish if you don't log-in to play often enough. The Jew loves the Samurai, it seems.

We may bear witness to the final days of Square Enix, unless they merge with some other company. Maybe we'll end up with Square Enix Embracer?, Square Enix Activision Blizzard & Knuckles?.

[maidenhaver]

Square hasn't been good since Square Soft.

[somerandomdude]

Square hasn't been good since Square Soft.

I can't think of any examples where the quality of games actually improved after larger studios merged. Likewise, Enix was also better before the merger.

[Derringer]

Enix had less crap to manage before the merger, they were and still are a publishing company for smaller company products, after the merger they had to juggle more *******.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I bit the Viper pill. Very nice animations. It's a little confusing at first with the four, three-button combos thing, but then you realize you just alternate between two buttons, press whichever proc is glowing, and then attack from behind the mob when pressing a red button or from the side when pressing a green button. That's it.

This expansion did not introduce a new healer job, so everyone is playing the two new DPS jobs. A levelling dungeon queue as a DPS is now an hour+ long. I am seeing Vipers in party finder offering to pay 1 million gil per dungeon run to each tank and healer. Your best bet to level right now is to zerg FATEs in Endwalker zones. It's not very fun as there is no challenge, the action onscreen is incomprehensible, and you don't feel the impact of your contribution. One FATE gives you around 1/20th of a level, and it takes at least 2 minutes to do a FATE including travel time, so about 30 per level. Multiply that by the ten levels required to go from 80 to 90 to start the next expansion and you're looking at about 3 hours of tedious FATE farming before you can start the new expansion content. Currently taking a break right now.








On the other hand, people are farming Endwalker FATEs en masse again, so this probably your last chance to get any Endwalker music rolls for your house if you want them, given that you have to do 66 FATEs in a zone to be able to unlock the music roll for purchase. I'll probably do Labyrinthos and Elpis for the music rolls.

[Vergil]

That looks like a cluster **** how do you even know what's happening?

[rusty_shackleford]

That looks like a cluster **** how do you even know what's happening?

They solved the problem they created by putting a bunch of colored circles on the ground. Look at the screenshots again and you'll see them in every picture. You stay out of the red ones, and stand in the blue ones. That's 90% of the game.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That looks like a cluster **** how do you even know what's happening?

You don't, but that's okay because the mechanics don't matter at all. The orange circles are AoEs you are supposed to run out of. However, everyone is power capped. When you unlock the Viper job, you get a set of ilevel 515 gear that makes you gear capped for the FATEs. So you can stand in several AoEs and you won't die, and you just use the DPS role ability, bloodbath, to make your AoEs leech health from the many mobs you hit to heal to full within a couple seconds. So you pretty much just stand on top of the mob spawn points spamming AoEs for the 60 or 90 seconds the FATE lasts.

[Vergil]

Yea I don't know what any of that means dawg

[OnTilt]

Gaming should have remained a niche hobby. I blame everything bad in the gaming world to it being enjoyed by normies.

[A Chinese opium den]

That looks like a cluster **** how do you even know what's happening?

You don't, but that's okay because the mechanics don't matter at all. The orange circles are AoEs you are supposed to run out of. However, everyone is power capped. When you unlock the Viper job, you get a set of ilevel 515 gear that makes you gear capped for the FATEs. So you can stand in several AoEs and you won't die, and you just use the DPS role ability, bloodbath, to make your AoEs leech health from the many mobs you hit to heal to full within a couple seconds. So you pretty much just stand on top of the mob spawn points spamming AoEs for the 60 or 90 seconds the FATE lasts.

AOE circles don't even matter in raids, you just yell at your healers to pull you to safety and stand still focusing on optimal dps rotations. Supports don't like it but this is peak mage performance.

[rusty_shackleford]

None of the classes matter, FF14 has to be the worst WoW-clone MMO I've played and it being so popular is why normies shouldn't be allowed to use the internet.

[Vergil]

Gaming should have remained a niche hobby. I blame everything bad in the gaming world to it being enjoyed by normies.

Imagine how sovlful gaming would be if it was exclusively occupied by landed aristocracy in 1750.

[A Chinese opium den]

Gaming should have remained a niche hobby. I blame everything bad in the gaming world to it being enjoyed by normies.

Imagine how sovlful gaming would be if it was exclusively occupied by landed aristocracy in 1750.

This is the future I'm fighting for

[StudiedAsleep]

The game looks like a weeb/furry game.. some of the graphics in prev images here look decent tho

I played FF XV and really enjoyed it, only remember one furry character and that was part of the DLC. Tried playing FF XIII and felt a bit too old for it tbh, plus there was a furry char right from the start.

Never really been a fan of mmos. Black Desert Online was fun for about 15 minutes. Don’t see how this could top that tho?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Don’t see how this could top that tho?

The term "MMO" has become archaic. The current big three MMOs (WoW, GW2, and FF14), don't really facilitate socialization like in oldschool MMOs where you were forced to group up in order to progress very early on. The current MMOs are more like ongoing singleplayer games where you occasionally play with random other people to get something done, with the main appeal being that they are high fantasy artbook games where you get new zones and classes to play with every year or two, and the investment in and customization of your main character who you take through multiple RPGs of content.

WoW and GW2 have the best gameplay in terms of zone design, fight design, class customization, the game's responsiveness to your inputs, etc. GW2 and FF14 have the best story experience, with GW2's story experience being mostly gameplay and setpieces whereas FF14's story experience is borderline visual novel in the amount of dialogue and internal examination of characters. WoW has a really bad, incoherent new player experience and requires toughing it out for a while before you get a grasp of what is going on. GW2 and FF14 have much more palatable new player experiences, with GW2's vanilla content being a little lackluster at times whereas FF14 lives or dies on whether or not you like 400+ hour long visual novels. FF14 feels like it has higher production values and feels nicer in presentation than GW2, which has some ugly looking human character models, buggy UI issues, and engine draw distance issues.

If you want a true MMO where you are making friendships or participating in an ingame community, then you should look at private servers/emulators of old MMOs like Final Fantasy XI, ACE Online, Warhammer Age of Reckoning, etc.

Tried playing FF XIII and felt a bit too old for it tbh, plus there was a furry char right from the start.

I think you are talking about FFX, as that is the last mainline singleplayer game with a furry party member, Kimahri. FF12 had a girl with bunny ears, FF13 and FF15 only had human party members, and in FF16 you only play as one human.

[Mondain]

2/3 have homosexual content, the other is a weeb game.

[Finarfin]

I bit the Viper pill. Very nice animations. It's a little confusing at first with the four, three-button combos thing, but then you realize you just alternate between two buttons, press whichever proc is glowing, and then attack from behind the mob when pressing a red button or from the side when pressing a green button. That's it.

This expansion did not introduce a new healer job, so everyone is playing the two new DPS jobs. A levelling dungeon queue as a DPS is now an hour+ long. I am seeing Vipers in party finder offering to pay 1 million gil per dungeon run to each tank and healer. Your best bet to level right now is to zerg FATEs in Endwalker zones. It's not very fun as there is no challenge, the action onscreen is incomprehensible, and you don't feel the impact of your contribution. One FATE gives you around 1/20th of a level, and it takes at least 2 minutes to do a FATE including travel time, so about 30 per level. Multiply that by the ten levels required to go from 80 to 90 to start the next expansion and you're looking at about 3 hours of tedious FATE farming before you can start the new expansion content. Currently taking a break right now.








On the other hand, people are farming Endwalker FATEs en masse again, so this probably your last chance to get any Endwalker music rolls for your house if you want them, given that you have to do 66 FATEs in a zone to be able to unlock the music roll for purchase. I'll probably do Labyrinthos and Elpis for the music rolls.

Great.. I got about 60 days of gametime left and reading this, kinda stifled my excitement for dawntrail. I really don't want to play black mage in dawntrail because it's way too slow and immobile. Guild members said "Yeah, dps queue of 30m-1h is normal" No, it's not. The Roulette never took me 30 minutes to queue, only if I queued for specific content that is old or not as popular.
Well, there's still Warcraft atleast. And First Descendent also comes out soon, so there's that.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

2/3 have homosexual content, the other is a weeb game.

All three of them are woke. In fact, FF14 is perhaps the most woke of them all. It isn't overtly obvious at a glance.

In WoW, you had the blackwashing of Dalaran and Stormwind human NPCs (in a world where all seven kingdoms are white, and brown/bronzed/black people exist but are a minority diaspora). Annoying but you don't interact with Dalaran or Stormwind vendors all that often so it can be overlooked. New faction leaders tend to be females (most allied race leaders, 3 of the Covenant leaders, etc), you have ridiculous stuff like a ****** becoming the head of the afterlife (don't you want people who do not have a grip on reality to judge the fate of all souls?) or two gay centaurs gaining the blessing of their ancestors (literally encouraging their bloodline to cease), Chromie is now ***** for some reason, etc. But again they get very little screentime compared to the manly OGs like Thrall, Genn, Magni, etc. In the current expansion, Dragonflight, most zone questlines are about stronk female leaders lecturing to passive, insecure men. It comes off more as a joke than something to be really sad about. Annoying, but story just isn't as big part of the WoW experience. You do the 20 hour long expansion story once and then spend 500 more hours doing mythic+ dungeons.

In GW2, the wokeness is easily forgettable. I think there is a blink and you miss it line in season 2 where you find out that Caithe and Faolain were lesbian lovers, and then Faolain disappears and you forget about it. There is another lesbian couple that pops up every now and then, but again mostly forgettable. Nothing obnoxious until late into season 5/Icebrood Saga when one of the strong male leaders gets replaced by a woman who advocates for peace and globalism, which is then followed up by more of the same in the End of Dragons expansion. But GW2 is more gameplay focused so it's easier to forget.

FF14 is the most egregious, as it is a story first game, a 400+ hour long visual novel. The globalist agenda doesn't become recognizable until about 300 hours in, around late Stormblood/early Shadowbringers. Every racial capital is being forced into becoming a multicultural city. Every kingdom you visit is overthrown and replaced by a republic. Every country has to join fantasy NATO and hold hands and join sing kumbaya, or they are evil. Countries have no right to fight for their own selfinterests or their own people, unless it is fantasy NATO/the protagonists. And then there is the heavy death cult messaging in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. It's a 400+ hour long story where this stuff is front and center, and you are exposed to it for a lot longer than in WoW or GW2. You can laugh at the blackwashed NPCs or the gay centaurs in WoW and move on, but you can't really do that in FF14.