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

[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.