Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Overcooked Raccoon]

There's also ones like your race as well. There's a moment in Stormblood where you're in the Azime Steppe and if you play a Xaela Au'ra the NPCs in the MSQ will talk about how you've come back to your homeland and you're doing your tribe proud by joining in this event.

If you also play a lalafell in Shadowbringers and talk to some of the NPCs on the First(some required for MSQ) the characters remark that you're not wearing a helmet like the other ones and that you're an odd one. It's things like that I enjoy the most since it's not only in the side quests but the main story and is nice flavor text.

 

[Some Manajerk]

The reason i fell in love with the game can best be summed up by what i said to the friend who got me into it about 30 hours in

"This isn't an MMO with the final fantasy name tacked on it, its a Final Fantasy game with an MMO tacked on"

 

[Tanner Glass]

There's also ones like your race as well.

There's a really good one if you talk to the Monster Hunter palico as a Miquote.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

"This isn't an MMO with the final fantasy name tacked on it, its a Final Fantasy game with an MMO tacked on"

This was me and Heavensward. That story I feel is a missing numbered title and the best part is I could go into it with very minimal knowledge of ARR and appreciate it all the same. The world, the characters, the music (Soken is a fucking god with music), and just the progression of the world is fantastic. Ishgard is an amazing place to be in, and I wish I played while it was the major hub to see all of the players in it like the Crystarium is now.

There's a really good one if you talk to the Monster Hunter palico as a Miquote.

"A talking cat?"
"That's rich, coming from you! Have you looked in a mirror lately!?"

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Going to give it another shot when they trim down the ARR quest line.

I will give WoW as much shit as anyone, but it didn't make me slog through months worth of mandatory exposition dumps and fetch quests to get into the highly praised expansion content is rough as hell. I get FFXIV is far more story driven than Wow, but I don't want to watch nodding heads for that long.

 

[Kane Lives]

Going to give it another shot when they trim down the ARR quest line.

I will give WoW as much shit as anyone, but it didn't make me slog through months worth of mandatory exposition dumps and fetch quests to get into the highly praised expansion content is rough as hell. I get FFXIV is far more story driven than Wow, but I don't want to watch nodding heads for that long.

On the other, I'm the sucker that enjoyed the exposition, rough as it was.

I totally get why it'd bore anyone not interested in the story though, because that shit is real rough in ARR.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Going to give it another shot when they trim down the ARR quest line.

I will give WoW as much shit as anyone, but it didn't make me slog through months worth of mandatory exposition dumps and fetch quests to get into the highly praised expansion content is rough as hell. I get FFXIV is far more story driven than Wow, but I don't want to watch nodding heads for that long.

That's supposedly coming in 5.3. There is a lot there, but it does enable them to have an actual cohesive story.

FFXIV is also a lot better than WoW at respecting a player's time to play, so if you stick with it you wind up making that time back.

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

FFXIV is also a lot better than WoW at respecting a player's time to play,

lol

Cmon man. Its a good game, but it's still a grindy MMO at the end of the day.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

Going to give it another shot when they trim down the ARR quest line.

I will give WoW as much shit as anyone, but it didn't make me slog through months worth of mandatory exposition dumps and fetch quests to get into the highly praised expansion content is rough as hell. I get FFXIV is far more story driven than Wow, but I don't want to watch nodding heads for that long.

They said in 5.3 they're cutting down around 13% of ARR, from 2.0 to 2.5 so that will make life a bit easier.

ARR is the big hurdle, though IMO if you read abrief summary of the events of it and then jump into HW I still think you'll get the full enjoyment.

The leveling has gotten much better and they said in 5.3 they won't make you locked out of HW by offering more EXP (If you just plow through the story and not do any roulettes),

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Yeah, for me it was less that the story at that point was dull, and just more how it's delivery was so...bland. After the dungeons and quest lines that genuinely sucked me in, I was suddenly treated to various fantasy names vomiting anime at me during cutscenes that may as well have been freeze frames.

Even as I leveled up I felt a sense of dread whenever I got told to go back to that chick in the seaside town.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

You'll def appreciate HW more as the beginning of it basically treats the player as a fish out of water to the society of Ishgard so you learn about it and the people (more so if you've paid attention to ARR). The dungeons are way more fun as well as more interesting mechanics get mixed in (and will be more present in later content)

I know it's gonna be mild spoilers but I would watch the opening to Heavensward just to get an idea of how everything looks in comparison:

Wanted the one without sound effects since it really shows just how good the theming is and how it amps up from ARR. The pacing, the world building, the fucking music, it was like a shock to my system. I heard this at Distant Worlds in Boston once and I almost fucking cried because the singer hit the high notes and hearing it in person is absolutely unreal.

The Waking Sands(The location you're talking about) is awful. Whenever you get back do this and it will spare your sanity. Go to Limsa Lominsa, take the aetheryte to the Arcanist's Guild, walk about 10 seconds to the west and there's a person you can talk to that will let you take a ferry. That ferry will bring you right next to the Waking Sands and will save you the fucking 1-2 minute trip they try making you do from Horizon to it. It moves later on to a location that is much easier to go to and stays there for the entire expansions, so don't worry about it after then.

 

[Tanner Glass]

lol

Cmon man. Its a good game, but it's still a grindy MMO at the end of the day.

I didn't say it wasn't grindy (it's an MMO, as you said), it's just more respectful of a player's time than WoW.

FFXIV raids require no travel to get into (no warlock summoning, no portals, no meeting stones)
FFXIV raids have no trash mobs of any kind. There is no "fucking around for 10-15 minutes between bosses".
FFXIV characters have no power to be gained from learning tradeskills. Leveling a tradeskill is entirely optional for character power.
FFXIV raids do not drop anything for crafting - no plans, no materials. There's no "farming" of a raid instance.
FFXIV raids/dungeons/etc have a much better gear progression and catch-up system than WoW.
FFXIV (similar to WoW) has an "advanced currency" (like justice/valor tokens) with a weekly limit - but with many more options to get said currency. FFXIV's currency can be done in a day or two of light play.
FFXIV doesn't have any "mobile game" shit tied into the gear (Like Titanforging, Thunderforging, Warforging). Meaning that once you've got the gear you want, you don't need to re-run the raid for 2+ months trying to get a drop with a slightly higher item level.
FFXIV raiding also has built in RNG protection - bosses drop gear (shared loot, 2 per boss) + tokens for gear (everyone in the raid gets one), meaning you won't ever be in a position where you'll be expected to clear a boss for 10+ weeks for healer boots as everyone will get "partial" loot for killing the boss.
FFXIV's higher level players are incentivezed to help lower level players in dungeons, raids, and trials - leading to much more manageable queue times for DPS classes across all levels.
FFXIV's crafting has 0 "rare drop" recipes and nothing that can be crafted needs to be farmed.
FFXIV's crafting materials are typically easily accessible (frequently from vendors).
FFXIV's mining/herb nodes are not global and don't need to be fought over.
FFXIV has no "backpacks" and all character inventories are 140 slots, plus a 325 slot inventory just for equipment, plus two banks with 140 slots each (given to you at level 15).
FFXIV has no "daily cooldowns" such as Alchemy transmutes or specific cloths. You don't have to log in every day to amass a "rare" material (which is made up of a bunch of farmed material) to make a "rare" backpack.

FFXIV's character system lets a character learn all jobs on one character.
- Your "alt" will never get a drop that your main needs and vice versa
- You do not need to create and maintain a seperate max level character to learn more than 2 tradeskills
- You don't need to create a new character to try a new role
- No need to mail yourself anything or keep track of separate inventories, banks, and guild banks.
- FFXIV gives a % based EXP boost to any class that's lower than your highest level class. No full set of heirlooms to unlock and upgrade 4+ times each for 1000's of gold for each armor type.

I could probably go on forever, but FFXIV is a game that's designed around the fun parts of it and not caring if a player "catches up" and takes a break until the next patch cycle as opposed to WoW's "player retention" nonsense that tries to force you into the game more. I've played both games a lot and FFXIV is way faster to "catch up" in and much easier to put down for a while.

 

[haurchefant]

I'm only in this thread to praise the sun for giving us Yoship whomst we do not deserve and is making bank by being a competent game dev. How the fuck Square doesn't have a constant line of hookers wrapping around the building and feeding into his office, I have no idea.

God I hope Square doesn't shit on his vision for FFXVI

 

[Vapewizard]

As an ultra weeb I've been interested in this game for a while cause I always liked messing around with class systems and character creators, and apparently the plot is good as well. I may end up going for the free trial when I'm done with my current game obsession. Though, I'll definitely need to get a stable source of income before I actually commit to the real deal.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

I'm only in this thread to praise the sun for giving us Yoship whomst we do not deserve and is making bank by being a competent game dev. How the fuck Square doesn't have a constant line of hookers wrapping around the building and feeding into his office, I have no idea.

God I hope Square doesn't shit on his vision for FFXVI

I see no reason why they would. He personally told them that he could salvage it, did so, and by all appearances brought the game to parity with the other biggest MMO on the market. They like his vision and his team and the public like him back. That probably counts for a lot when your competition is very publicly unpleasant to work at, has to deal with massive controversy every 2-3 months, and has had endgame content droughts that stretch past a year in every xpac since Wrath.

 

[haurchefant]

I see no reason why they would. He personally told them that he could salvage it, did so, and by all appearances brought the game to parity with the other biggest MMO on the market. They like his vision and his team and the public like him back. That probably counts for a lot when your competition is very publicly unpleasant to work at, has to deal with massive controversy every 2-3 months, and has had endgame content droughts that stretch past a year in every xpac since Wrath.

I put literally nothing past Square Enix at this point. They'd jam a grenade up their own asses and pull the pin if someone in their company convinced them it was a good idea.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

As an ultra weeb I've been interested in this game for a while cause I always liked messing around with class systems and character creators, and apparently the plot is good as well. I may end up going for the free trial when I'm done with my current game obsession. Though, I'll definitely need to get a stable source of income before I actually commit to the real deal.

Def the best choice. Free trial I believe goes up to level 35 which is more then halfway through the story of ARR and lets you level everything up to that point. If you buy a physical edition of the game (Like Complete Collection) you generally get a free month of sub which gets you through a lot of the game coming off the free trial. I'll def say the moment you really get sucked into it you do save some money if you hold back on the Mogstation purchases.

I'm only in this thread to praise the sun for giving us Yoship whomst we do not deserve and is making bank by being a competent game dev. How the fuck Square doesn't have a constant line of hookers wrapping around the building and feeding into his office, I have no idea.

God I hope Square doesn't shit on his vision for FFXVI

He's def one of my favorite producers because he tries to keep it transparent when he needs to talk about something. Two live letters ago he had that almost 50+ min talk about mods, parsers, and plugins. To some people it was absolutely boring (since some don't use/care about them) but to me I found it insanely interesting.

The talk on mods was a given, the player technically doesn't own the character, SE does (which is why you see those copyrights down on photos using tools like gpose in game). So the statement is generally made to those who import models from other games/shows/properties to avoid legal blowback (on the lighter end) and to the people who keep posting nude models of their characters as to avoid the risk of having to increase the games age rating/possible banning in certain countries. People still post those mods, but they have to keep them extremely away from XIV, removing all copyright, delinking accounts, and almost warping them into looking source film like just to avoid a ban from SE.

For people not in the know Parsing is a big hot button topic in XIV. XIV supported it a while back but after an incident in Japan where a guest on a show was called out for shitty parses, Yoshi-P and co "officially" banned the use of them as to prevent anyone else from being personally targeted. They still know that parsing goes on through third party tools like ACT that read the data from a fight and can allow the player to convert them to sites like FFLogs for comparison.

Casual players want that stuff banned because they feel it puts too much pressure on them and certain party finder groups (pending on your DC) will deny you because you either don't have a parse for a fight or your parses are crap and they consider you dead weight.

On the flip side XIV has no real way of tracking your damage totals (past looking at the aggro table which doesn't offer much), so you could not be optimizing your rotation, understand raid buff timings, or just being shit without noticing. So parsers and FFLogs are taken as a blessing since it allows players who WANT to improve to look at the information and see their faults. XIVAnalysis has been my go to lately to understand what I missed in a fight, check my ABC(Always Be Casting), and see my overall progress from when I started.

Yoshi-P basically said "We don't support parsers because they are considered third party tools" but followed up with "Discord is also a third party tool used to talk to each other, so if we made a statement on banning third party tools, we would have to ban that too". He then also made my favorite statement relating to it "Programs like ACT would be as if I was playing with a calculator in front of me, would that also be considered a third party tool?" ACT doesn't alter the game or the data, so by just having the info available to the player it doesn't affect the actual game past the player learning to improve. Papa Yoshi just wants people to stop being cunts about bringing up numbers to people unprovoked or in an negative tone in game and just keep it to discord so that they don't have to deal with it.

Dude manages to tackle those topics in a way where he doesn't lock the team into a situation they can't get out of. By putting general statements and not outright banning this and that, they can adapt to whatever comes out on the fly.

 

[Vapewizard]

The one thing that'd be kind of unfortunate is that I'm european, so that may cause issues when most people I know who are into this seem to be american. I just googled it and I guess if I get into it for real I could play on an american server where my friends are but I may end up suffering from lag.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Casual players want that stuff banned because they feel it puts too much pressure on them and certain party finder groups (pending on your DC) will deny you because you either don't have a parse for a fight or your parses are crap and they consider you dead weight.

On the flip side XIV has no real way of tracking your damage totals (past looking at the aggro table which doesn't offer much), so you could not be optimizing your rotation, understand raid buff timings, or just being shit without noticing. So parsers and FFLogs are taken as a blessing since it allows players who WANT to improve to look at the information and see their faults. XIVAnalysis has been my go to lately to understand what I missed in a fight, check my ABC(Always Be Casting), and see my overall progress from when I started.

Also Yoshi-P has played World of Warcraft so he's aware how much toxicity is tied to people fighting over damage meters.

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

Also Yoshi-P has played World of Warcraft so he's aware how much toxicity is tied to people fighting over damage meters.

Yeah that really helps with just him getting both the casual concerns but also those who want to improve. Grey area may seem scary to some but it allows both to exist without nulling the other.

The one thing that'd be kind of unfortunate is that I'm european, so that may cause issues when most people I know who are into this seem to be american. I just googled it and I guess if I get into it for real I could play on an american server where my friends are but I may end up suffering from lag.

I know a fair amount of Euro people who play on the US servers and a crapton also play from Australia due to the US ones being closer for ping and language barrier. Pending on which DC you go on you'll always find stuff going on in varying amounts. Once you buy the game and have a sub you can also make an character on each DC(For free) to be better find which one goes with you.

That also includes EU and JP DC's as well.