A Chinese opium den wrote: ↑
April 29th, 2024, 01:28You know I had entirely forgotten about this game, does it have an active end game or would I need to wrangle other fresh players into playing with me if I picked it up now?
The game is still active. You beat the main story by yourself, and then after that you can progress through three tiers of postgame quests that become increasingly difficult. Doing the quests with other players is way faster but most of them can be soloed if need be. There are six quests in particular that are very difficult to alone, even as a geared player: the three quests where you fight two dragons at once, the Gallanza and Magielle dual boss fight, Proto-Bahamut, and the Lucilius superboss. The latter three quests drop valuable loot so people are continuing to queue for them through multiplayer and making their own farm lobbies you can join. If queuing for a quest through matchmaking doesn't work, you can open a lobby asking for help and people will join. Another thing is that if you play with other people, you only have to farm stuff to gear up the one character you play, rather than having to farm 4x as many mats to upgrade your party of 4 characters (the one you control + 3 NPCs).
The most consistent issue I've seen with new players trying to progress is that they don't understand how to build their characters. There is a damage cap that you will easily reach, and the way to deal more damage is to equip damage uncap sigils that allow you to deal more damage. I don't think the game ever explains that there is a damage cap mechanic. Secondly, players too often equip the attack sigil which gives them a tiny amount of attack stat in the endgame, when they should be equipping damage multiplier sigils like stamina, tyranny, life on the line, less is more, charged attack, etc.