FFXIV

[sinnatious]

So!  I started playing FFXIV recently.

Since you know, I make great decisions like deciding to try out MMOs for the first time when I'm unemployed. YEAH, THAT CAN'T POSSIBLY GO WRONG. But I'd been listening to a lot of friends talking about it, and had read a few game dev articles about the relaunch, and that made me curious enough to take the plunge.

IT'S PRETTY AWESOME.

I can't even really nail what it is I love so much about it. It's very pretty, naturally, as Square games often are. The story's quite decent, and it has such a natural difficulty progression.  And there's always something to do. I've joined both a Free Company and a linkshell (a group chat). The FC's fun if fairly quiet lately, filled with universally cool people. The linkshell seems a little more active but mostly Lvl 50 endgame stuff and full of people I don't know and have no idea what they're talking about most of the time so wind up mostly ignoring my chat windows unless something happens to catch my eye. The community in general is pretty great though, you get the occasional inconsiderate random/gold farmer but everyone is overwhelmingly really nice and polite, at least on my server. Also it's hilarious whenever Odin pops up and the entire server loses their shit and drops everything for it. I'm looking forward to being a high enough level to get in on that.

I also keep joining guilds, even though my main class is still a ways from Level 50. It's like, I wander into a building, and they're like 'Want to be a botanist?' And I'm like 'Yeah sure!' Then the next one. 'Want to be a lancer?' 'Why not?' 'How about a conjurer?' 'Hell yes.' 'Alchemist?' 'Hand over that alembic.'

I've gone the Black Mage job route though, mostly because mages are always my favourite in the standard Final Fantasies (followed closely by dragoons and summoners). And my play style favours 'kill it before it can kill you' sort of standoffs. Was totally worth it as the thaumaturge (the offensive magic class) quests are totally the best. 'Adventurer! Try to keep your blood inside of your body!'

Also Cocobuki is badass.

Sometimes I deeply regret not choosing Lalafell as my character's race.

That said I am developing a deep appreciation for archer as I once solo'd a Boss FATE (active-time event) by running in circles just out of boss's attack range for fifteen minutes. I'm sure it looked amazingly stupid but it kept me alive and made the boss dead. (Less effective on bosses with ranged attacks, of course...)

The main story is pretty neat, too, Thancred is pretty hot, fingers crossed next Dissidia (if there ever is one) uses him. I would write fanfic about Thancred. Dungeons are fun! They usually go one of two ways - I wind up running with experienced Level 50-type players who are slumming it in a lower dungeon or something and are totally pro and the whole thing runs so smoothly I'm often left going 'did I even help?' Since I'm a mage and really DPS (damage dealers aka glass cannons) seem superfluous to the tanks and healers sometimes. Still, this is pretty fun, especially when it's with Free Company peeps.

The other way is downright hilarious, when you get a particularly bad member of the team and utter chaos happens. I've had one of each - a (presumably) noob tank that couldn't keep the enemies on them, leaving myself and an archer pulling all of the enemies and running around like ninnies while the healer desperately tried to keep us alive until I remembered I had a sleep spell and just used that instead. Or the one time we had a healer who never paid attention and the arcanist with us wound up (somewhat ineffectually) informally taking over healing duty half the time. Or that one time the other DPS just kept running ahead and basically playing the part of tank (once again, with the healer frantically trying to keep them alive while the tank flailed).

Total loony tunes. Leeory Jenkins is funnier to me now that it used to be.

Luckily most of the occasions when I've been the totally hopeless newbie have mostly been with very understanding and awesome guildmates. I've yet to try any of the tanking classes though - seems like a lot of responsibility! It's a little more fun when you land a party of similarly-experienced players though - my first run through Brayflox was particularly enjoyable as they were a party of three PS4 players who were on their second run trying to beat the dungeon. A lot less pressure, and though we all screwed up a bit (tank struggled to keep more than one enemy on them, the healer of all people was pulling aggro, I managed to pull aggro a couple of times too, and I have no idea what the bard was doing half the time) we never wiped. It helps that I'm starting to learn how to deal with certain types of tanks. Lower level or tunnel-vision tanks I put myself on DoT and sleep duty to compensate, others seem to like to take on everything at once at which point I just switch to

DPS really is so unnecessary most of the time though. My first time against Titan, I was partied with another newbie (healer) and an experienced tank and DPS. We made it almost all the way to the end in the first fight when I went down, and the healer soon after so we wiped. I knew what was up this time though so managed to avoid dying, except the healer then managed to get knocked out of the fight three times in a row - they must have had lag or something. All good... except then the next time I was the victim of lag and about halfway through got knocked out... And the trio then finished the fight without me. XD  It took them about three times as long as our first attempt but I just lay down there being embarrassed and cheering them on via the chat window. Not a great feeling being carried though.

I went and got battleping after that. I was leery of paying even that small amount for it, but jeez, after the trial? Even mining goes faster! And I could actually dodge! When people say 'dodging is actually easy' they weren't taking lag into account. It's not perfect but it's not the 'by the time the casting bar hits halfway it's already too late' scenario any more. The curse of playing MMOs in Australia.

The most fun however is just running around doing FATEs with randoms or rolling around the world with friends. The sort of spontaneous stuff that happens when you're just stuffing around or stopping to smell the virtual flowers. Like one time when I was playing Conjurer class, the game gave me an achievement for resurrecting a player I'd just seen die on my way elsewhere.

The minute I get into a party I feel invincible though. Like, in my ongoing journey of joining every guild I stumble into, I started up an Arcanist as well, about level 10 now, and since I've finally got my chocobo fighting with me, I had a cool three 'person' party happening and and just kept going 'what, that sprite is 10 levels higher than us? WE CAN TAKE HIM!' Then I wind up running away as my carbuncle and chocobo valiantly sacrifice themselves to let me escape.

My chocobo and I are total bros though. I have him summoned CONSTANTLY. Even when I'm just mining or crafting, he'll stick around and guard my back. I don't care how many gysal greens it takes! I don't spend my gil on anything other than teleports and gysal greens anyway.

I'm totally considering customising my Thaumaturge into a Red Mage though. Screw it, I'm going to go back and dump a lot of stats into Mind, or maybe I'll just accessorise with that solely in mind. I already have my Arcanist and Conjurer classes levelled up respectably enough to get some cool cross-class skills.  It'll be useless in super-high-level content probably but I want to play a Red Maaaaaaage. :|

Disciple of War classes definitely have the coolest clothes though.

Hilariously, for a period of time a leather codpiece had the best stats.

The game is also stunningly beautiful, which may not be as obvious in my screenshots since I turned a lot of the graphics settings way down in favour of a better frame rate (since I'm stuck playing on my laptop instead of my desktop for network reasons, and my poor laptop overheats enough as it is).

ALSO, THIS FMV.

That's all I wanted to say about FFXIV.  How's everyone else doing?

Comments

[killiara.livejournal.com]

OMG NOW YOU PLAY IT TOO???

We have to have to have to coordinate servers.

I am so with you on the beauty. There are times when I'll just stop and stare at the landscape in front of me. Those limestone cliffs of Limosa.. <3 And I absolutely love the weather effects. Mining at night in a lightning storm with rain blowing at a 45 degree angle, or pushing my way through a sandstorm and changing headgear just so I have cloth to hide my nose and mouth under... I love that when it rains, my character looks wet. I love that I can visit Costa del Sol. I love my chocobo, and all the vanity pets. I love that if I wanted to I could have pink hair with green highlights and totally be a watermelon. I love that I can spend several weeks leveling non-combat professions, not touch combat at all, and feel as if every second was well spent.

... though, really, whoever designed weavers? We need a talk. Spinning wheels are for spinning yarn. Embroidery hoops are NOT for spinning yarn.

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Haha well I'm not likely to leave mine since I do like my FC friends on there, but you're welcome to join me on Siren! What server are you playing on at the moment? What's your race/class?

The weather is awesome. I think my favourite however is the incredible clear nights - that starry sky! I was out in the desert in Thanalan once and I just sat there staring at it for ages. Definitely have to grab a screenshot of that sometime. I like that they've introduced that Sightseeing journal, I'll be making good use of it!

And you've summed up a lot of what I like about it too. Such a great game. *__*

LOL at the weaving. At least they tried?

[killiara.livejournal.com]

The weaving drives me crazy! I crochet and knit rl, so I know how these work. So seeing my character go, "I'm gonna make pants! Hi Mr. Spinning wheel! Now I need some thread, hi Mr. Embroidery hoop!" makes me want to throttle someone.

I'm on Primal, Lamia at the moment, as the Bard Minerva Grey, level 37 human. I'm also Amarelle Ashendust, level 20 Conjurer/Arcanist, kitty person. I figure with her I keep the levels equal, switching classes each level up so I can go White Mage and Summoner. and maybe Scholar, too. There's also my level 7 thaurmage Burnya Uppe, elf. :D
.... yes. Altitis even in a game that supposedly minimises it. Just threw a baby pugilist on your server, Hera Green.

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Heh, maybe you should have steered clear of that crafting class then! XD

LOL, so many alts! I went more the route of one character doing everything. Sinnatious Sone, feel free to friend request me when Hera is online sometime. :)

[killiara.livejournal.com]

Hah, just hit level 10. I'll send a friend request now and then, but I think it only works when both people are online.

[fezastwin.livejournal.com]

I so want to play that game. My computer would melt if I tried. I get hooked on mmorpgs so easily too, I'd be sucked in forever.

Did you know Esama is back on Ao3 and has re-posted some of her old fanfic?

She also started a crack piece of FFVII fic called "Off the Line" where Cloud joins an on-line game...
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1295005/chapters/2686486

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've been reading that, it's awesome. Heh, it does make me wish for a few of those features in FFXIV though!

[fezastwin.livejournal.com]

... male Viera in skimpy costumes? ;P

[rafira.livejournal.com]

yEs YES YES YES i love that oyu are enjoying ffxiv so much!! now we need to actually play togther. when you're 50 we can do fun 50 things together :)
ps i hear youve been helping my noob friends quite a lot on their dungeons, thank you so much <3!!!

ps do you ship thancred and minfillia? i definitely feel like she pines for him :P

and yeah battleping makes SO MUCH DIFFERENCE LIKE WOAH :O

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Yeah! We've had bad timing. Also it was totally dead for a while, because of Supanova I guess. I'm pretty close to 50 now though, hit 48 last night! Need to spend a bit more time on my crafting classes though so might not hit 50 for a few more days yet.

Haha no need to thank me, it's fun to help out with the lower level stuff! And I have more than enough alt classes now that could use a bit of dungeon running for levelling up.

I hadn't really thought about it but I could definitely ship that! A bit worried about Thancred really, haven't seen him for a while...

Battleping is massive, makes it soooo much easier. Wish I'd had it sooner!

[rafira.livejournal.com]

yeah we're all on all the time now! and if you're where you're up to in the story where i think you are, you should easily be able to get to 50 with the storyline quests now anyway. there are quite a a few of them.and if you are also there, you will see thancred soon i think :)

i noticed you're trying a bit of everything out hehehhehe. any favourites?

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Ohoho yes, that was a cool twist with Thancred. All the more emotional since I started in Ul'dah! Up to Castrum Meridianum now. Will be interesting running in my first eight-person dungeon!

BLM is still my favourite, but I've also really been enjoying Conjurer! Might go for a White Mage next - plus I love those short DF queues it has. :) I'm mostly chasing all those sweet cross-class skills though, heh.

[rafira.livejournal.com]

yeh! i didn't have thancred (i had y'sholte b/c limsa, didn't realize everyone had different ones based on their town until the very end heeh) so i didn't really notice he vanished but yeah. psst do you ship him with minfillia? i totes ship them.

mmm that short queue. the nice thing is that our fc and linkshell has no shortage of any class so there's a lot of flexibility to find what you enjoy the most.

ps sorry about how awful that WP run was the other night ):!! i am not so great at healing.

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Haha I could totally ship them, you're definitely right about Minfillia pining over him.

Hey no don't apologise! It was still heaps of fun, and we made it through with Edeas in the end. I've figured out a much better AOE rotation since too so if anyone should be apologising it should be me for my DPSing! It was a super cool dungeon though, all those tonberries~

Have to get a better weapon before I start hitting those post 50 dungeons much more though, I think. I've picked up my relic quest line but am reluctant to spend gil (saving for a private room~!) so levelling up my goldsmith like mad. Might have to buy the materia for it though, I have some III materia but none of the right kind.

Oh! And I went and installed mumble so we shouldn't have to suffer Skype in the future. :)

[rafira.livejournal.com]

yeahhh ship it. oh man i love all the NPCS they are so cool.


oh cool are you still figuring out your rotation? 50's when you really need to figure out waht does the best damage output, there are many threads about roation if you want some inspiration.

good luck for your relic! lemme know if you need some help! you might wanna run wanderers palace some more to get the darklight weapon at the end :D!!

yay!! mumble is great. our server details are on the fb group :D!!

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've had my single-target rotation down pretty good but I've figured out that for groups I'm just wasting time on the Umbral Ice phase - better to just transpose and start a hard cast, by the time Fire 3 is done my mana I can jump straight back into Flares. I thought it would be less efficient because it felt slower but Flare is just ridiculous, two casts of that is worth way more than three casts of Fire 2. Less mana-efficient, for sure, but I figure BLM against mobs is more 'as much damage as fast as possible' more so than mana efficiency. But... all that is probably not super interesting to you as a Summoner! :D

Thanks for all the tips! Definitely looking forward to running some more stuff.

[rafira.livejournal.com]

yeah you should def have a slightly different rotation for single target vs multi target. blm aoe is one of the best things about blm! blm and whm (with holy) are best for aoe).

blm seems like a lot of fun :) i should lvl mine up more hmm.

what are you working on now? just goldsmithing? :)

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

My AOE rotation is massively different these days. I've finally settled on (when it's feasible - sometimes mobs just die too quickly to bother) Fire III to get full astral fire stack -> Flare -> Convert -> Flare -> Transpose -> Flare -> repeat ad infinitum with the occasional Fire II when transpose is still on cooldown and popping swiftcast and the other buffs when they're available.

I still mess it up a lot under fire but it's getting there! Yeah, level your BLM! It's worth it just for the story quest, one of the better class quest storylines in my opinion. :)

Working on a bunch of different things as always. Atma, plus main storyline quest (Thornmarch was awesome!), plus trying to rack up soldiery now for that gear so more hunts. Also my miner, will probably hit 50 on that tonight. And yeah, lots of goldsmithing, plus my other crafting classes, and spending a bit of time on my WHM and other classes occasionally too.

Too many things to do in this game! What are you working on at the moment?

[rafira.livejournal.com]

i love how all the classes' story quests are different. there's so much to do. such a big world!

my current goals:
1) catch my special fish and get my high lvl gear from that, then catch the expensive fish and make so much gil i can roll in it
2) brd to 50. then maybe i'll get back on my pally? then maybe pug. not sure.

but yeah that's it. fishing and lvlling.

[whitearchmage.livejournal.com]

DAMN! I gotta stalk you check this place more often. I've gotten at least 2 friends hooked on it and am currently in the long, boring process of getting Black Mage to 50. Because I really want that Archmage title and I need all 3 Disciples of Magic at 50 for that.

Get ready for mid-forties, when a loincloth and some leather straps have way better stats than anything you could make. And then leveling crafters, and then leveling gatherers...on second tought, you may have to set aside a couple of months to get into all end-game content. What server did you choose, anyways?

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Ha nice, good work on the enabling! BLM represent! I'm on Siren, which are you?

I actually haven't had that much scanty clothing armour in the magic classes! It's all been disciple of war stuff. End game seems pretty intense, I just hit Level 48 but the world opens up so much around 45 with the beast tribes and new dungeons and everything else.

Also yesterday I just discovered guildheists for the first time, so there's that too...

[whitearchmage.livejournal.com]

I'm on Mateus, Emperor love alll the way!

And there's just so much to DO after level 50 that the post-game feels like a whole other game: the next storyline quests, side story quests, Hard Mode Primals, Relic Weapons... Square Enix must really want our money...

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

They don't want those sweet, sweet subscription monies to dry up, for sure.

And next week we get private rooms! And chocobo raising! And there's that promised Gold Saucer on the horizon...

YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[chisuto.livejournal.com]

Not that we play on the same server (I'm on Cactuar) but we could still potentially end up playing together via Duty Roulette or Guildhests ('cause they're cross-server)! :D
I just get so excited about FFXIV! :D

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Hi-five! What class do you play? What your avatar's name? I'm easy to spot, Sinnatious everywheeeeeere.

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[chisuto.livejournal.com]

My avatar's name is Tasallei Bannor. (The rest of my family plays, too, there's like... three other Bannors running around, haha, so if you end up playing with one of them, it's us!)

I'm a:
10 PUG
15 MAR
21 LAN
16 ARC
50 WHM
49 SMN/SCH
48 BLM (Cocobuki IS badass.)

What about you, other than your THM?

Anything super fun you've been doing recently in game? I've been running Hunts, which are simultaneously fun and SO AGGRAVATING when you're trying to run from one side of freaking West Than to the other and all you hear are shouts of:
"DON'T PULL, OTW."
"SERIOUSLY, DON'T PULL."
"accidentally pulled lol"
"STILL ON MY WAY, I'M COMING."
"dead whoops"

Thanks, FFXIV. -__-

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

Ha nice! Please tell me you have your own Bannor-themed family FC. :P

I have joined all but three of the guilds at this point (blacksmith, armourer and marauder I have yet to broach). I've got Goldsmith and Miner to 50 and have been slowly working on getting them up to 2-star level. Other notables are my WHM at 46, Botanist at 40, Weaver at 41, Bard at 38! \o/ Been working on ATMA too but taking my time with it because FATE-farming gets boring pretty quickly. Mostly because you're so often level-syncing down to 15 and losing all of your abilities. :(

Ahaha Hunts are crazy. Luckily I usually only hunt at night Australia time, which is early morning in NA and thus server population down quite a bit. There's less concern about hunts doing that disappearing trick because of the number of players so people are less likely to jump the gun on pulling. LOL but you could totally have a drinking game around hunts. A shot when someone pulls early. A sip for every 'inv please'. You would be drunk in no time. XD

Have you done the Moonfire Faire stuff? So fun! Made me want to go to a real festival again. XD

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[(Anonymous)]

We're working on making a Bannor-themed family FC. :D
It's a thing - it'll happen... eventually. I definitely play the most out of all of my family and it's a bit of struggle to get the rest of them to play most times. Orz

WHM is the best~ #whmpride
But BLM is equally fun. And they're RIDICULOUSLY OP. Like, they do almost as much damage as the tanks, which is crazy.

I still don't really understand ATMA? I just normally hear people shouting about it, hahaha.

I haven't done much FATE-farming but I rather love FATE-grinding. Coerthas is kinda the coolest thing to ever happen to that game, in my opinion. :D

Ohmigawd, if I did a drinking game, I'd die.
The irony is that you could totally say, "Hunt up," and give boogus coordinates and everyone and their mother would STILL come running all over the place.

I'm working on Moonfire Faire stuff! Only thing is I finally finished the actual main story (whoops, late to THAT party, haha), so I've been running around and collecting the level 50 quests and figuring out which HM dungeons I want to run.
So many choices...

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[sinnatious.livejournal.com]

You'll understand atma after (and if) you do your relic quest. It's basically just a randomised drop from FATEs you need to gather to upgrade your weapon, but the nature of truly random drops is that they're massively unfair, so you have some people doing the quest in no time at all and others who can literally spend weeks without reward. Hopefully Square fixes it somewhat (there is some evidence that they may have tweaked the drop rate to be a little higher but the system is still poorly designed as it currently stands). These days there are much easier methods of getting a high level weapon so a lot of people are shifting to those instead. It's probably the first instance of true, pure painful grind I've encountered in the game yet. It wouldn't so bad if you could level up another class while you weren't doing it... I have eight out of twelve so far, thinking I might only do relic for the one class...

Love Coerthas. Mor Dhona too. All the high level areas are just beautiful and amazing.

Yeah, post-50 there's still so much more to do! The answer is: everything. You have to do everything.

Re: YAS, ANOTHER FFXIV PLAYER! :D

[chisuto.livejournal.com]

Whoops - that anon comment you just got was meeeee~
Sorry. XD