Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[RIPRhongoBongo]

But they do not have special powers or moderator rights?

Also, what about people with a red chair next to their name?

1st question: No. They're just regular players with more time on their hands

The red chair is just an AFK symbol

 

[ChromaQuack]

But they do not have special powers or moderator rights?

Also, what about people with a red chair next to their name?

Their only power is being the absolute worst players you'll ever meet while also ironically carrying a mentor tag.

Red chair are AFK players.

As for the community, it varies, if you're in crystal datacenter you're in troon central (and if you're in balmung you're essentially in the FF14 equivalent of the animal control subforum), everywhere else your mileage might vary.

As for chatting with other players, no text bubbles means it's easy to miss someone talking to you unless they mention you by name/emote at you to somehow grab your attention, and even then some will have any chat that isn't guild/party blocked.

All dungeons are timed to take more or less 30-40 minutes to finish. Very apparent when you play with the NPC companions which they have added to most extant dungeons in the game. A group with players who pay attention can easily shorten it to 25 minutes or so, 20 minutes for ARR/HW dungeons which can be cheesed to an extent.

Depends on the expansion a lot, some of the mid-game dungeons have weird in-between bosses structure to the pulls, like the few SB dungeons that block the way until you kill one single monster pack and effectively waste your time by preventing the tank from just training a 20+ horde.

90/expert? you can have 10 minute runs if you don't get glue eaters.

 

[Kane Lives]

90/expert? you can have 10 minute runs if you don't get glue eaters.

If is a pretty big ask on Crystal, unfortunately.

 

[King Of Braves]

There are no speech bubbles like in WoW, right?

If you're playing on PC, there's mods for that and other QoL features.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

Where do people actually talk? In WoW it was world chat or region chat. Do others see it when I use Say? Because no one has reacted to me so far. I asked a dude where he got his cute companion and was left on ignore.

During dungeons and raids it's party chat. 24-man raids and frontlines it's alliance chat since that goes out to all three parties. Almost no one uses say. Shout chat goes out to the whole zone which is where most public chat goes. Yell is a meme and is just piss chat. If you really want to talk to someone send a tell. Unless you're doing a hunt, or there's an event going on in the zone, or maybe you're in Eureka/Bozja there really isn't any general chat going on at all. It's mostly private chat but you might have some luck in more social areas like Limsa or Ul'Dah if you're on Balmung. It's hard to get a general chat going since the best you can do is talk to everyone in the current zone, and even cities are split into two zones.

I came to ffxiv because a family member said it's not as bad as WoW communitywise (e.g. troons, etc). Was hoping not to be in a mine field, having to be careful where to step and walk.

FFXIV is troon central. It is the essence of faggotry condensed into its purest form. I have limited experience actually socializing in WoW, I always kept quiet, but if FFXIV is supposed to be the "better" of the two WoW must be the literal definition of hell. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

 

[00R-Gundam]

Mentors or BK Crowns tend to be narcissistic people who are power hungry. Yes there are a few who actually mentor and contribute and teach the game to newbies. Thing is that having a BK crown doesnt represent actual skill and knowledge of the game(you can see the problem there when the role is Mentoring) you can literally get carried for the duty requirements(i forget) and the other requirements are just level up shit and play alot. Which is why most BK crowners get shit and memed on.

 

[Soycast Guy]

Thanks for the advice. I do have a hard time caring about the plot and notice a tendency to skip dialogues and trying to get something done. It is a really nice looking game but man, sinking my teeth into it like with WoW seems impossible.

ARR isn’t very good and was rushed just so the game could be fixed, so I can see why you’d skip dialogue. The game is noticeably much better once you get to heavensward. Then in stormblood it dips to fairly low quality again, not as bad as ARR, but definitely lower quality. And then in shadowbringers the game peaks, and then Endwalker is another dip in quality. This game isn’t very consistent with quality.

 

[Well Intentioned]

There are no speech bubbles like in WoW, right?

You can get an addon if you're on PC that adds those in.

What does the crown mean?

Means someone is a Mentor. Which means they just did a pretty negligible bit of busywork to be granted status to help new players. Not all mentors are bad, but a lot of them are insufferable. EDIT: And the only 'power' they have is the ability to invite/kick people from the Novice Network. And yes, that small bit of power goes straight to their heads.

I came to ffxiv because a family member said it's not as bad as WoW communitywise (e.g. troons, etc). Was hoping not to be in a mine field, having to be careful where to step and walk.

Yeah, uh. Not sure what your family member was thinking. There's less political sperging in Tradechat and "toxicity", but it's traded off by being lousy with troons et al and oodles of toxic positivity (which is worse, IMO.)

 

[ChromaQuack]

ARR isn’t very good and was rushed just so the game could be fixed, so I can see why you’d skip dialogue. The game is noticeably much better once you get to heavensward. Then in stormblood it dips to fairly low quality again, not as bad as ARR, but definitely lower quality. And then in shadowbringers the game peaks, and then Endwalker is another dip in quality. This game isn’t very consistent with quality.

#NotAllOfARR

The ARR-HW bridge quests are pretty good, particularly now that they cut out a good chunk of bullshit from them.

Otherwise unless you care about worldbuilding minutiae you're fairly safe just glazing over the dialogue up to level 35-40.

And a small tip, once you hit 50 look up how to unlock the crystal tower raids and clear them as you do the post-ARR quests, you really don't want to be 10 minutes away from heavensward and have to eat 3 queues and alliance raids.

 

[King Of Braves]

#NotAllOfARR

The ARR-HW bridge quests are pretty good, particularly now that they cut out a good chunk of bullshit from them.

Otherwise unless you care about worldbuilding minutiae you're fairly safe just glazing over the dialogue up to level 35-40.

And a small tip, once you hit 50 look up how to unlock the crystal tower raids and clear them as you do the post-ARR quests, you really don't want to be 10 minutes away from heavensward and have to eat 3 queues and alliance raids.

I believe they made crystal tower mandatory to the story now. I'm not sure exactly how that's implemented, but I know you have to do them to proceed.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

When does the game get good? The novice training was annoying.

Legitimately after 40-50 hours, and even then.
You have to admire the systems that they're setting up to tide you through the time: the gameplay and story won't. ARR's story is actually interesting once you know what everything is - on a second play-through there's actually quite a lot of interesting detail. But none of it is ever explained, and names and terms are thrown around with no effort made to ensure you have any grasp of what's being said, so it's impossible to give a shit about. I barely remembered anything that happened the first time I played through it.

The gameplay really only starts to pick up around the end of Heavensward, but the storytelling itself improves so dramatically there that it's easier to tide through. It's bog standard JRPG fare, but they swap out the godawful voice actors for talented ones (many Dark Souls almuni), and once the gameplay begins to improve, it keeps improving steadily through Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Endwalker really doesn't add much gameplay-wise - minor refinements to classes - but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Especially since EW saw two major class reworks, both of which sucked ass.

If is a pretty big ask on Crystal, unfortunately.

I think it's the case anywhere these days - the old divisions were diluted by the influx of streamer kiddies.

Of course, all I can speak to was Crystal experience. I started dropping out of a lot of dungeons because the number of curebots spiked dramatically, which adds a ton of time to clears when it's already pretty common to, as tank, outdamage the paint-eaters.

I believe they made crystal tower mandatory to the story now. I'm not sure exactly how that's implemented, but I know you have to do them to proceed.

You have to have it done before you can do Shadowbringers. I think it's just a requirement that blocks you from accepting the first ShB MSQ entry, but I'm not entirely sure.
I really wish they'd give that place its own roulette. I just drop whenever I get one of those three. Utter nightmare of boredom.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

All this shitting on mentors and I pretty much leave my crown on cause it means it's funnier when I fuck up a basic mechanic and go "oh shit, mentor skills btw".

But yeah, mentor is time-gated, not based in any real skill metric. I just went for a look around the hub cities and used a plugin to bring up mentors FFlogs and about half of them have empty logs (looking at all ults, most recent savage tier, and last 3 extremes). For reference, Extreme is the entry level to challenging content and apparently sits at around the same difficulty as what would be considered "Heroic" in WoW (or so I've heard, not a WoW player).

Honestly, you're only gonna be able to tell if someone is actually any good by playing with them. Legend titles or having a current savage/ultimate weapon might indicate someone is decent. But it's not uncommon for people to pay real-world money for clears on endgame content, to get carried, to only learn the fight and not how to be good, or to just be so bored that they can't be bothered to think during the "easy" content.

 

[ChromaQuack]

You have to have it done before you can do Shadowbringers. I think it's just a requirement that blocks you from accepting the first ShB MSQ entry, but I'm not entirely sure.
I really wish they'd give that place its own roulette. I just drop whenever I get one of those three. Utter nightmare of boredom.

It's a requirement to even enter heavensward now, you must complete it before you can do the last few quests of the ARR bridge, that's why I was suggesting he unlocks and does it as he works through the 50+ scenario, otherwise he's going to hit a lockout and have to sit on his ass for all 3 raids in a row.

It's honestly a shit change, a friend who was playing hit it right as he was riding a story clearing wave and grew disinterested due to it, I'd argue even forcing you to clear it before SHB is shit as it renders one of the big reveals thoroughly pointless; thank God I played through SHB before CT raids became a requirement to even touch it, it kept the one mystery of the expansion intact for me.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

thank God I played through SHB before CT raids became a requirement to even touch it, it kept the one mystery of the expansion intact for me.

Yeah, it is a little dunderheaded. It could have been resolved in a more simple way with a line, after the reveal, of him going: "We haven't met yet, in your timeline, but we will" or something, alongside unique dialogue in the CT scenes themselves for having already met him in ShB first. Given that those old cutscenes are all unvoiced, it'd be an easy add.

But they also have done nothing to change the CT raids for fucking years, which means you can genuinely AFK through them and clear without issue.
Even if they're fast, they're a solid 20-30 minutes of not playing the game.

 

[Kane Lives]

Yeah, it is a little dunderheaded. It could have been resolved in a more simple way with a line, after the reveal, of him going: "We haven't met yet, in your timeline, but we will" or something, alongside unique dialogue in the CT scenes themselves for having already met him in ShB first. Given that those old cutscenes are all unvoiced, it'd be an easy add.

But they also have done nothing to change the CT raids for fucking years, which means you can genuinely AFK through them and clear without issue.
Even if they're fast, they're a solid 20-30 minutes of not playing the game.

It's weird because when ShB was first released, they accounted for you not playing the CT raid simply by hiding the extra options that opened up if you did play the raid series. Sort of a little extra reward for actually completing old kahntent.

This gay move to try and make sure everyone remembers him pretty much destroyed what mystery he had.

 

[BruhSheep]

I'm currently in the midst of a break from the game. While there's still some post-EW content I've yet to clear (laziness more than anything), the grind for a Eureka relic for the shinys (I'm a vain bastard, sue me) burnt me out before I even finished.

Though to be honest, I'm actually seriously kicking around the idea of upon my return, switching a quiet server and just enjoying solo content moving forward. I don't mind the people I've formed an FC with, they're all mostly cool and not retarded, and it's great to be able to easily call on people to fill ranks when queue times are shit.

But man can it be exhausting to log in and be bombarded with pleas for help or requests to run boring roulettes I no longer have to do because I've already mastered all the jobs I want to play. Sometimes, you just wanna play a video game in peace and quiet, you know?

On the subject of the BK crown, having achieved mine a while back, I do agree it's just a vanity symbol. I tried to be a good mentor to sprouts, and I still try here and there when I run into one. I even make use of markers to guide the idiots out of death spots for boss fights and mash the jump button a lot to get their attention. But mentorship is a thankless, pointless endeavor. And if it wasn't for the time investment I put in to earn those idiotic 1500 commendations, I'd just turn it off. As it is, I earned the crown, may as well display it. Again: vanity.

Game's in a lull right now before the expansion, so probably the ideal time to take a snooze.

 

[RIPRhongoBongo]

I've been having some fun doing trials unsynched. Having some trouble dealing with the instant death, but nothing major

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

I've been having some fun doing trials unsynched. Having some trouble dealing with the instant death, but nothing major

Go in as a tank and pop your invuln when a failed mechanic would cause instant death. If the mechanic doesn't ignore invulns or have something else attached that makes it so you're going to die like an effect that outlasts your invuln, then you should be able to just get on with it.

All the ARR/HSW trials are soloable. For Stormblood, you're gonna run into issues with Susano in particular though since his sword mechanic can't be resolved at all unless there are two players.

 

[RIPRhongoBongo]

For Stormblood, you're gonna run into issues with Susano in particular though since his sword mechanic can't be resolved at all unless there are two players.

Well that makes it slightly less fun. Guessing Tsukiyomi is kind of the same way since the adds come from two angles?

 

[ChromaQuack]

Try O8S solo, it's fun tough it did take me a good hour and a half to get it right, very doable with WAR.

You could also enter the world of BLU soloing, been working on O12S but it's been destroying me with how tight the dps can be for the door boss (omega F+M), the one after you can just press buttons and win.