Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Haramburger]

Did you assholes ever roll on Brianna Wu's server and harass her right out of the game by simply existing in the same space with a triggering guild name?

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Did you assholes ever roll on Brianna Wu's server and harass her right out of the game by simply existing in the same space with a triggering guild name?

What server?

 

[Haramburger]

What server?

Ragnarok

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Ragnarok

Any particular class or race? I want to say Vierra because John’s a lanky fuck but they’re a few weeks out. I can’t really place her class cause I’m new.

 

[V0dka]

I just started playing this game, and even though I'm at a low level I'm so surprised. It's like someone who played WoW and who correctly identified the good parts and got rid of the bad parts made a game. It's like whoever made this is a regular MMO player.

 

[Inquisitor_BadAss]

I just started playing this game, and even though I'm at a low level I'm so surprised. It's like someone who played WoW and who correctly identified the good parts and got rid of the bad parts made a game. It's like whoever made this is a regular MMO player.

You should have seen it when it first came out the whole game was a shit show before being basically rebuilt in the heavens ward expansion.

 

[Fek]

I keep seeing this thread in the list and read "Final Fantasy XIV - A Kiwi-Free Company."

Otherwise, I've got nothing.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

I got told about how you can’t start an xpac at cap in this game. How much of an extra level am I looking at to get from the end of a realm reborn to the start of heavensward?

 

[Stab You in the Back]

I got told about how you can’t start an xpac at cap in this game. How much of an extra level am I looking at to get from the end of a realm reborn to the start of heavensward?

Depends on what you've done already. If you're at cap, I think you just have to complete the post-release ARR MSQ quests to get into Heavensward. Shouldn't take more than 30-40 hours, or 2 hours if you skip cutscenes.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I just started playing this game, and even though I'm at a low level I'm so surprised. It's like someone who played WoW and who correctly identified the good parts and got rid of the bad parts made a game. It's like whoever made this is a regular MMO player.

That's literally what happened.

The game launched as a janky ass version of FFXI and was regarded as the least fun shit ever until the new (and current) game's director stepped in and suggested that he could fix it.

Part of his design documents were literally "how the fuck could you make an MMO without having played the competition, how fucking arrogant". He notably played Ultima, Everquest, and World of Warcraft. It's notable because these are not "easy to get" games in Japan, it makes him the equivalent to the crazy people in America who play Phantasy Star Online 2.

 

[V0dka]

That's literally what happened.

The game launched as a janky ass version of FFXI and was regarded as the least fun shit ever until the new (and current) game's director stepped in and suggested that he could fix it.

Part of his design documents were literally "how the fuck could you make an MMO without having played the competition, how fucking arrogant". He notably played Ultima, Everquest, and World of Warcraft. It's notable because these are not "easy to get" games in Japan, it makes him the equivalent to the crazy people in America who play Phantasy Star Online 2.

I suppose thats the thing thats so bizarre. Many of the top guys in WoW dev today, were former EQ/WoW raiders. They've played the game, they know what people deal with regularly. So why is it, they now defer to "metrics time played" "engagement levels" these days? When at arguably at the height of WoW's success ,WOTLK ,the dev team would come to Blizzcon and explain things that made sense to you, the player.

And today, we have a Japanese company that recognized their own hubris, that the WoW dev team today holds, and went "We fucked up, we will get someone on this who knows their shit". And now look at FFXIV.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I suppose thats the thing thats so bizarre. Many of the top guys in WoW dev today, were former EQ/WoW raiders. They've played the game, they know what people deal with regularly. So why is it, they now defer to "metrics time played" "engagement levels" these days? When at arguably at the height of WoW's success ,WOTLK ,the dev team would come to Blizzcon and explain things that made sense to you, the player.

And today, we have a Japanese company that recognized their own hubris, that the WoW dev team today holds, and went "We fucked up, we will get someone on this who knows their shit". And now look at FFXIV.

I would argue that most of the top dev guys in WoW are not the former EQ/WoW raiders - most of those guys have moved on to different companies. In particular, the "famous" guys all left years ago. Pardo left in 2014, Kaplan is still with the company but got moved to Titan/Overwatch in 2009, and Chilton got moved to a different project in 2016. The only one of those guys left is Afarsiabi, and he was mainly a quest designer.

It's likely the general incompetence over at Blizzard (they have had a slew of late, episodic, and terrible releases) has seen their parent company, Activision, taking a more active role in the day to day of the company. WoW is currently run by Ion Hazzikostas, who for all intents is basically just "some guy". As he's never run a game before, he's probably taking cues from Activision about the engagement science. Considering how it's going under his watch (Battle for Azeroth is his first "solo" expansion) I would expect more Activision intervention.

FFXIV (via Director Yoshida) is billed instead as a "you don't have to play it everyday" type game. "Take a break and play other games, we'll be here when you get back with more stuff for you."

 

[JektheDumbass]

Heavensward can suck a dick. You split your time between defending the most irredeemable people on the planet from being eaten by dragons and dancing on the strings of a smirking little shit that gets away with everything at the end. I stopped playing because the story was pissing me off.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

That's literally what happened.

The game launched as a janky ass version of FFXI and was regarded as the least fun shit ever until the new (and current) game's director stepped in and suggested that he could fix it.

Part of his design documents were literally "how the fuck could you make an MMO without having played the competition, how fucking arrogant". He notably played Ultima, Everquest, and World of Warcraft. It's notable because these are not "easy to get" games in Japan, it makes him the equivalent to the crazy people in America who play Phantasy Star Online 2.

He also has a leg up due having a fairly long history in the game industry and thus is probably better at putting insight into what works into practice. My understanding is that Ion, the lead for WoW currently, only came to Blizzard after Wrath and was an attorney beforehand. He probably knows how to get a goddamn point across, but he may not have all that good an idea how to keep things on direction. It’s also worth noting that he’s a hardcore raider, which might explain why everything but that has withered in FF14’s main competition since WoD.

 

[Inquisitor_BadAss]

The absolute state of Cerberus right now



Like seriously what is this crap!

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

There is a current Final Fantasy thread (which is very good) but I wanted to make a split one considering XIV is an MMO and will keep(albeit at times slow as fuck) getting new content. This will hopefully allow for more up to date discussion.

EDIT: This thread ended up being merged into this one so consider this a more general overview to late readers

Final Fantasy XIV is a MMOJRPG is (at this time of writing) one of the most popular MMO's currently duking it out with WoW in the field. It's currently on it's third expansion (Shadowbringers) and has been a huge success for PS4 and PC players (soon to be Xbox One as well).

However it wasn't always the success story it is now and if you want to learn about the troubled development of XIV in an more shitposty way here's a quick video to brush you up on it.

TLDR the current director since ARR: Naoki Yoshida (Known as Yoshi-P) made it canon that the original world of 1.0 (Just the base game of XIV and not ARR) was nuked by Bahamut because the game was such a fucking trashheap(Calamity). With the player officially starting in the world of 2.0 (ARR). Pending on if the player played the game during the original run of 1.0 you got additional cutscenes, references, exclusive tattoo, and your name in the credits of 2.0+ as a way of saying thank you.

The game has your usual mmo standards: dungeons, raids, hunts, crafting, gathering, glamour(the TRUE endgame), housing, pvp(as much as people will say otherwise), etc. Following a Pay to Play model, the dev team follows a patch cycle every couple of months of delivering new types of content to the player.

My history with the game was a bit mixed. I played back when Heavensward had just come out but I was still stuck in ARR. I thought the plot was stupid and stopped caring until I hit the Praetorium (the most fucking infamous dungeon imo), and even then only had mild interest. I took a break for about a year and a half until Stormblood had just come out, with a day off I decided to pick up where I was and push forward, mainly due to the hype that everyone was saying about Heavensward. I still was not very interested in the story until I saw the fight with Ravana and Shiva, from there for some reason I started caring about the shit going on and I've been keeping up actively with the story ever since. Can say for those curious HW is my favorite of the three current expansions from a story perspective but Shadowbringers is giving it a run for it's money.

I currently have characters on all the NA Datacenters and one on the EU DC. I generally raid (Currently progging E8S at Icelit as a Tank), but also PVP, hunt, craft, gather, but mainly just hang out with friends and run things.

Feel free to talk about shit relating to it or post any new happenings involving the game as it continues to move onward.

 

[Some Manajerk]

The Hildibrand questlines. if you need something to convince you to power through some of the more boring quests, just know that once you unlock these they are just hilarious. I won't say anything more because they're really (IMO) to good to spoil and have to be seen to be believed.

 

[Friendly_AI]

The Hildibrand questlines. if you need something to convince you to power through some of the more boring quests, just know that once you unlock these they are just hilarious. I won't say anything more because they're really (IMO) to good to spoil and have to be seen to be believed.

I also love how they subtly incorporate lots of mythology and epic characters throughout the game, even though it's not that unique in current popular culture. Still, even Hildebrand is a name from German folklore, and it's hilarious when you compare Hildi in game and his epic prototype.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

The Hildibrand questlines. if you need something to convince you to power through some of the more boring quests, just know that once you unlock these they are just hilarious. I won't say anything more because they're really (IMO) to good to spoil and have to be seen to be believed.

I can happily say even if you don't give a flying shit about the story or characters that those stories are just absolutely amazing. It's just Japanese comedy on a different level. The Stormblood series of quests took me on a wild ride of emotions, and the ending to that story actually made feel more then the end of the MSQ at that point.

If you have some time or are queuing into content with long queues I recommend picking up those quests (You get the first one at 50), as they are extremely good.

 

[Some Manajerk]

Another thing i like is if you spend you time leveling up different classes, the game will acknowledge it in conversations. Yshtola's mentor mentioning you've been studying under her as a summoner, being a ninja gets you a nod when they start training people in the art of shinobi. Even if you aren't one of those classes when the conversations take place. just a little thing, but its nice of the game to show it.